Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: In this chamber, I call continued second reading debate on Education Statutes Amendment Act, and in the Douglas Fir Room, Committee A, I call continued estimates debate for the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

[S. Gibson in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 8 — EDUCATION STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 2020

(continued)

S. Furstenau: It’s delightful to hear the sounds of little Lu̓á in the House, our young visitor who is here.

I’m appreciative to have this opportunity to speak to Bill 8, the Education Statutes Amendment Act. This bill makes amendments to several sections of the School Act and the Independent School Act that are intended to provide clarity on a number of items. Some of the aspects of the bill include introducing a section to the School Act that clarifies that it is within a school board’s mandate to provide before- and after-school care or allow a licensee to use school board property for the purpose of providing before- and after-school care.

We in the Green caucus see this as a positive step for several reasons. It provides clarity around proper use of school board property for child care, and it recognizes that using school board property for before- and after-school care is an efficient and effective use of space that provides a much-needed service while, ideally, reducing the challenge that many parents face — namely, that school hours are not necessarily the same as work hours.

It is also a step towards recognizing the connection of education from the earliest years and the role that high-quality ECE-informed child care plays in building the foundations for lifelong learning. I recognize that this bill does not speak specifically to early childhood education facilities on school properties, but I applaud the minister for the step he is taking to ensure that before- and after-school care can and should be integrated into all of our schools.

I would be remiss not to point out what I think are important next steps. I have long been advocating for the early learning and care system that is being developed by Minister Chen to be moved to the Ministry of Education in recognition that early childhood learning is learning and that early childhood educators are incredibly valuable educators and, as such, should be part of the continuum of education in our public education system.

I’m particularly excited about the vision that has been brought forward by the Cowichan community for the new high school that was recently announced in Duncan. I think this speaks to what this bill is leading us towards, which is the recognition that a school is far more than a place where kids go to learn things; it is a valuable and integral part of all of our communities. That is what the new high school in the Cowichan, in Duncan, will be. It will be an integral and central part of our community. Located in the same area as Vancouver Island University and the Cowichan Community Centre, the school will be part of a community commons, “an anchor within our community,” as school district 79 chair Candace Spilsbury put it.

[1:40 p.m.]

Indeed, all schools are anchors within our communities, and the more that we invest in them, the more that we make them the centres of our neighbourhoods, the better we all are for it. In so many ways, schools have enormous untapped potential, sitting largely unused after the school day ends, on weekends and during holidays. This provision to ensure clarity — that, yes, before- and after-school care in schools and on school property is an absolutely appropriate use of school property — is a good step towards remedying this underused potential of our education institutions.

We don’t need to stop there. Early childhood education, arts and theatre spaces, community gathering spaces — the list goes on for the potential uses of school property. I hope we can recognize that the more these properties are used, the stronger our communities are for it. I hope this is indeed one step towards harnessing a much greater potential that lies in our schools and school properties, our anchors within our communities.

It’s actually quite nice to be reminded of the work we’re doing here, with little Lu̓á making his coos in the background, because we are here to serve future generations. He is a great reminder of that.

This bill also modernizes language in the School Act and the Independent School Act around online learning, changing the language from “distributed learning” to reflect the reality of today. In addition, the bill clarifies the issuing of graduation certificates by schools operated by First Nations, fulfilling a commitment by the province under the B.C. Tripartite Education Agreement, in alignment with the declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples. The bill also adds a section that will authorize the assigning of a personal education number to any child who is a resident in B.C.

Finally, this bill introduces changes related to the review of the K-to-12 funding model in B.C., including new delivery models for online learning, ensuring that school boards adhere to particular governance and management practices and repealing the learning improvement fund. I look forward to canvassing all of these measures during committee stage.

High-quality public education is the necessary core of a thriving society, an innovative economy and a healthy democracy. It is the position of our caucus that government’s highest priority should be the goal of having the best-educated citizens in the world, and we should always be striving to find ways to do better. As we navigate the very significant transformations that are happening in our world right now, we should always remember that educators — whether early childhood educators; elementary, middle school or high school educators; or post-secondary educators — should be recognized not just as essential to the well-being of our province but as incredibly valuable parts of that well-being.

While this bill focuses on specific amendments to the School Act and the Independent School Act, I encourage government to continually seek ways to ensure that our education system is getting the care and the investments that it needs so that our educators can give the best care and greatest investments to the learners that they encourage, support and teach each day.

Deputy Speaker: Looking for further speakers to this bill.

If not, I call on the Minister of Education to close debate.

Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to those who participated in the debates this morning and this afternoon. I want to thank the critic, the member for Peace River North, for his contributions. I know he has raised a number of questions which we’ll get into at committee stage of the debate. We look forward to that. I want to thank the Minister of State for Child Care for her thoughtful remarks as well. I think she illustrated why government is pursuing at this time the amendments in this bill to advance the creation of tens of thousands of spaces in British Columbia that parents need in communities right around the province.

I also thank the member for North Vancouver–Lonsdale for sharing the experience of her constituents and adding, I think, to the debate some of the other benefits around transportation improvements that come from having co-located child care facilities in the school system. I want to also thank our closing speaker, the House Leader for the Third Party, for her support for the bill and for her interest at committee stage to ask additional questions where I will have ministry staff assisting me to do our level best to answer each and all of them.

[1:45 p.m.]

With that, I would close debate and let the motion stand for a vote.

Motion approved.

Hon. R. Fleming: I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 8, Education Statutes Amendment Act, 2020, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. C. James: I’d like to call Bill 2, Motor Vehicle Amendment Act, for second reading.

BILL 2 — MOTOR VEHICLE
AMENDMENT ACT, 2020

Hon. C. Trevena: I move that Bill 2 now be read a second time.

I’m very pleased to speak to legislative amendments to the Motor Vehicle Act that will require standardized training as a pre-licensing requirement for various classes of licensing. To support road safety and better train drivers, British Columbia is moving towards a driver licensing model that may require applicants for certain classes of B.C. driver’s licence to demonstrate that they’ve completed a driver training course in addition to completing the regular training that is required by ICBC.

Provinces from Ontario west, as well as some U.S. jurisdictions, have already introduced such a system for truck driver training. We are learning from them as we develop our approach, as well as acknowledging B.C.’s unique geography, as we work on developing the correct sort of training.

This is what is known in these jurisdictions as mandatory entry-level training. The calls for such a move have increased since the very sad incident, the tragedy involving the Humboldt Broncos, in which a truck driver who had little training slammed into the hockey team’s bus. We all know the devastating consequences of that. I myself have met with family members here in B.C., as well as others whose loved ones have been killed in truck accidents. It is definitely time to act.

This legislation in front of the House today is enabling legislation. It will allow for pre-training of other classes of licences if it is felt that it is needed, but at the moment, our government is considering the trucking industry. Amendments in this bill to support the model will enable government to require standardized training as a pre-licensing requirement for various classes of driver’s licence.

Any prescribed training courses will need to be ap­proved by ICBC and provided by a person or organization who is authorized by ICBC. Authority will also be added to the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council to provide exemptions and to delegate authority to ICBC to provide exemptions and to determine if the training a driver has received in other jurisdictions meets B.C.’s standards. As I say, I want to make sure that B.C.’s standards are rigorous.

The bill also includes changes to update, align and clarify aspects of the Motor Vehicle Act to support the operations of RoadSafetyBC and ICBC. The amendments will improve administration for the superintendent of motor vehicles, the courts and ICBC by clarifying authorities and ensuring that business processes align with legislation. The legislation will also repeal sections of the Motor Vehicle Act that are no longer in use. It’s quite a broad act, which covers areas for myself, as the Minister of Transportation, as well as my colleague the Solicitor General.

[1:50 p.m.]

Some of the amendments include enabling sheriff vehicles to operate as emergency vehicles for the safe transport of those in their custody, defining B.C. residency requirements for drivers’ licences and updating requirements, authorizing ICBC to cancel a driver’s licence that was issued incorrectly and providing ICBC the authority to extend drivers’ licences that expire during a state of provincial or local emergency.

Amendments also create a 60-day limitation period for applications for judicial review of administrative decisions made by the superintendent of motor vehicles, change the authority to make regulations for motor-assisted cycles and, finally, clarify the rules around using electronic devices in a hands-free manner for drivers in the graduated licence program.

With that, I close my remarks. I’m hoping that there will be full support and look forward to hearing the debate as well as the discussion when we get into committee stage.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Minister.

I recognize the Minister of Education.

Hon. R. Fleming: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s not to take my place in debate but to seek leave from the House to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

Hon. R. Fleming: I would ask members of the House to join me in welcoming a group of grade 11 and 12 students from Reynolds Secondary School. I’m very, very proud that I happen to be in the House this afternoon during their visit to the chambers. I’m very proud of this school. It’s in my constituency and is an exemplary of excellent academic achievement and great community social responsibility and awareness. I would ask the House to make these students most welcome here this afternoon for bill debate.

Debate Continued

M. Hunt: I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill 2. Unfortunately, for the students that are here…. Maybe, actually, it’s fortunate, since the Minister of Education is also here, the member for Victoria–Swan Lake. When we think of this House, and particularly the video clips that go out of this House, it’s usually question period, as an antagonistic question is asked and an antagonistic answer is given. We go back and forth, and the pounding of the desks…. I’m really pleased to rise to speak to Bill 2, because in fact, as the new critic for Transportation, I actually think that this is a very sensible piece of legislation.

One of the reasons I got involved in politics many, many years ago was because of the lack of common sense in some of the legislation that we have and/or the interpretation of that legislation in the real world. I’ll bring up one of those points here that’s being addressed by this legislation. But I’m really pleased to be able to speak to this, because I think we are bringing some creative, small, sensible changes to support the safety of our roads in B.C. The changes put forward in this bill provide actionable variations to the strong laws that are already in place, eliminating some redundancy and also increasing public safety measures.

Now, there are some great commonsense changes here that I’ve already referred to that will serve to make roads safer, like, for example, allowing sheriff vehicles to operate as emergency vehicles. I’m sorry, but I thought that was already the case. I’m surprised to find that it’s not the case. But it means that they can actually activate their emergency lights and their sirens in an emergency situation, just the simple one of: what if a prisoner that they’re transporting has a medical emergency? Well, you want them to get to the resources they need as quickly as possible. But currently that doesn’t seem to be possible.

Of course, what about the horrible incident of maybe a prisoner escapes custody, and they can’t speed in order to reapprehend the person? I tell you, I’m really pleased to see these. What about people caught in wildfires or states of emergencies? Again, what a simple, commonsense piece that should have been here a long time ago, but obviously, someone didn’t pick it up, or the situation hadn’t happened to somebody so that somebody complained. Usually, that’s how we find out there’s a problem with legislation. It’s when somebody has the problem and they say: “I’ve got this problem. Help me.”

[1:55 p.m.]

But during an emergency situation or an evacuation for wildfire, they don’t have to be worried about what’s going on with their driver’s licence renewal. It can automatically be extended for them and be dealt with once things calm down and we get past the emergency or whatever that disruption is.

Another one that I thought would have been in the legislation…. I am utterly surprised. Madam Minister, I give you warning that I am going to ask this question when we get to committee stage, but residency for a B.C. driver’s licence? I thought that was the case. When I moved here many, many, many years ago from Alberta, I know I had 90 days to get my licence changed on the vehicle, to get my driver’s licence changed. I thought that was the law. Obviously, there’s some little piece here somewhere that needs to be amended. My curiosity hopefully will be satisfied as we get into committee stage.

But also, for example, the issue of ICBC being able to delete a driver’s licence. Normally you’d sit there and say: “What? This is terrible.” But those of us that have had the challenge with new immigrants, particularly those who are coming from a nation where they speak a completely different language….

They adopt western names. The name that is on their passport may not be the name that’s on their driver’s licence, but they’re known by this name. Some wonderful employee interpreting the law says that it must be the same as your passport. You go: “But nobody ever calls me that, and nobody knows that.” It only makes sense, again, to be able to delete a driver’s licence and to be able to make appropriate changes and amendments.

Then, a notable piece in the legislation, obviously, is the inclusion of ICBC approving standardized training for certain classes of licences. They obviously prescribe that training courses be approved by ICBC. I have a class 2 licence. In having a class 2 licence, I had to take courses. In order to be able to get the privilege of being able to prove I could drive the vehicle, I had to take courses first of all — obviously the air brake course as well.

This is not something new and radical, but again, it’s something that simply makes sense. Of course, it makes sense that the government also needs to be able to have exemptions to that for people transferring into British Columbia with their current licence. They need to make sure, as the minister has suggested, that the standards are similar.

There are equivalencies. We have equivalencies in all sorts of other things. It only make sense that we have it here when it comes to our driver’s licence and the training programs involved. One of the challenges that you discover when you cross a provincial boundary is that all of a sudden, there’s a new set of rules as you cross that boundary. We need to have some consistencies across Canada so that we’re all working together.

Of course, we understand that perfectly when it comes to class 1 driver’s licences and the whole situation in Saskatchewan. All you have to do is say the Humboldt Broncos, and everybody knows. Okay, yes. Well understood. Very happy to see that happen.

But then there are some sneaky things that are in this bill, some sneaky things that, when you read the bill, you wonder: what is this? There is some stuff in here about alternate forms of transportation. You know, the problem is that legislation follows technology.

We can’t predict where technology is going, so things like e-bicycles, scooters, hoverboards, those sorts of things…. They haven’t been thought of in previous legislation because of what they are, but they need to get included into legislation, simply because they’re out on our roads. Whether we like it or not, they’re out on our roads. It needs to be addressed. It needs to be looked at. So that’s also in it. I have my curiosity up about a number of things in this bill. I look forward to committee stage on it.

In conclusion, there does not appear, as far as I’m concerned, to be any areas of significant concern at this time. Therefore, we’ll generally be supporting the amendments that are being brought forward. I look forward to the discussions and exploring some of these proposed amendments as we get to committee stage.

Deputy Speaker: Any further comment? I’ll now turn things over to the minister for her closing remarks.

[2:00 p.m.]

Hon. C. Trevena: I’m very pleased that there is clearly going to be support for this bill and, I hope, a good, thorough analysis of it as we go through committee stage. I’m looking forward to that.

My colleague from Surrey-Cloverdale was so collegial that I don’t want to make any political comments, as in they did have 16 years of being in government, when they could have found some of these loopholes. I wouldn’t say that, because it is important to work on. I mean, really, this is all about safety. It is all about common sense. And I’m glad my critic, the member for Surrey-Cloverdale, recognizes that and will be sharing that with his colleagues.

As he acknowledges, the mandatory entry-level training isn’t groundbreaking. Yes, we already have the air brakes training, and when I’ve gone out to training schools, they say: “We’ve already got mandatory entry-level training.” This is going to be much more rigorous. This is really going to bring our drivers and people who are working in the trucking sector up a level. They’re going to be doing significant training before they can get their driver’s licence.

I think this is something we’ve seen evolving through the other provinces. Ontario is the first, and we have seen it evolve through the other provinces. It’s not that we are laggards; it is that we have a different geography, different considerations when we’re looking at how to do it in B.C. I think there is very wide acceptance that this is the only way to be going forward for this industry.

It’s an important industry for us. We have, really, a very heavy volume of people working in the trucking industry. With the port, we are the main deliverer for a lot of western Canada. I think that there is a real onus on us to get it right, and that’s what this bill will allow us to move on with as an enabling piece of legislation.

With that, I move second reading.

Motion approved.

Hon. C. Trevena: I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting after today.

Bill 2, Motor Vehicle Amendment Act, 2020, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. C. James: I call Committee of the Whole on Bill 7, Arbitration Act. If we could perhaps just take a couple of minutes’ break, a recess, while we bring in staff and the minister.

Deputy Speaker: We’ll take a five-minute recess in preparation for committee stage.

The House recessed from 2:02 p.m. to 2:08 p.m.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 7 — ARBITRATION ACT

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 7; S. Gibson in the chair.

The committee met at 2:08 p.m.

The Chair: I’ll call the meeting to order on Bill 7, the Arbitration Act.

I recognize the House Leader.

[2:10 p.m.]

Hon. M. Farnworth: I move the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 2:15 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Committee of the Whole (Section B), having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call throne speech debate.

Throne Speech Debate

(continued)

Hon. C. Trevena: I left off talking about the throne speech last week, and I just wanted to recap, because it really is a superb throne speech. Our side of the House, obviously, is completely committed to what has been outlined in it. It outlined our continued commitment to really making life more affordable. The fact that we’ve eliminated MSP fees is saving families up to $1,800 a year. We announced new measures to make ICBC insurance less expensive and bring more fairness for drivers, taking the legal fees out of the system and dropping insurance rates by about 20 percent next year.

We are attacking the housing crisis right across the province, and in my own constituency, we’re making significant moves on housing. We’re on a path to universal child care, where every family has access to quality, affordable child care. We have removed those very unfair bridge tolls that were impacting people for where they lived. They were paying thousands of dollars just to get from home to work or back. We also froze ferry fares and actually took them back down in certain areas, and we reintroduced the very popular free seniors travel Monday to Thursday. We raised the minimum wage to $14.60, and by 2020, it’ll reach $15.20. So people across the province are already seeing the benefits.

When I was last talking about the throne speech, I was focusing very much on my own constituency and the benefits that people have seen, through the work of our government, in the north Island, a place that I’m extremely proud to represent. I’d like to use my remaining time in the throne speech to talk about my ministry.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I’m extraordinarily proud and privileged to be British Columbia’s Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure at a time when we’re making record investments in infrastructure, in our transportation system in British Columbia. We have, this year in the budget, more than $7 billion worth of infrastructure projects through my ministry. It’s an extraordinary amount. These are the big ones — the Pattullo, Highways 91 and 17, the very big ones — as well as the smaller ones.

[2:20 p.m.]

I know that my colleagues across the way from Delta South and other areas always want to know what we’re going to be doing about the Massey crossing. It’s very clearly there that we are advancing. The Massey crossing is there. Through the budget and in our declaration, this is something that we are absolutely committed to. We know that people are living in congestion there. We know that there needs to be a move.

We know that we’ve got to be improving the situation for people, but to do it in a way that is inclusive, to ensure that we have Metro mayors on board so that whatever is done in that corridor reflects the regional growth strategy of that area of the Lower Mainland. We don’t want to be imposing something that engineers may think is great but does not reflect, really, the values of the people living and working in those communities and who develop that.

I’m really, really extremely pleased those priorities are recognized both on growth and on transit. It’s going to have dedicated transit lanes. Whatever the crossing is decided upon, it will have dedicated transit lanes. So an already busy transit corridor will become able to be a more efficient corridor because we’re not talking about having to stop the HOV lanes at the edge of the present tunnel and then restart it. People will have a clear shot through. I think it will encourage more and more people to use transit through that very popular corridor already. It really does reflect that.

Recognizing the regional growth strategy, recognizing the needs of communities is something that we, as a prov­ince and as a government, are extremely committed to. One of the parts that has been reflected both in the budget and in intimations in the throne speech is the integrated transportation development strategy and, specifically, looking at Fraser Valley and how we can be ensuring that there is a truly efficient use of our transportation corridors.

[S. Gibson in the chair.]

I say transportation corridors because it isn’t just the main highways. It is how we can make sure that we are integrating all the different aspects, whether it is the highways or rail or the secondary highways, how we can make sure that we are developing these for best use, to make sure that there is that free flow so that people can get more easily from Chilliwack to Abbotsford or Abbotsford to Langley or Langley to Surrey — that this is a more easy connection, as well as looking at how that fits in with general planning.

Instead of just saying, “We are rushing to find a solution because Chilliwack has grown, and therefore, we need to make the highway six lanes and that’s the answer….” That’s not a sensible way of going forward when we are in an era of climate change. We can see the growth patterns. We can see how communities are changing and evolving.

That’s why our ministry will be working with Ministry of Municipal Affairs and working across government to develop this integrated transportation development strategy provincewide. So it will be Lower Mainland and then specifically in the Fraser Valley — how we can ensure that we are getting the ability, whether it’s people on the north side of the Fraser at Mission or Maple Ridge or Pitt Meadows, how they have an easier access — as well as those on the south side of the Fraser.

We look up the corridor, as far as Hope. People are clamoring for relief, but it isn’t always the relief of winding highway. That being said, our government has announced, after years and years of pressure and years and years of calls where nothing happened, a widening of Highway 1, putting in HOV lanes beyond the existing expansion that’s happening at 216th.

We’re going to be working with the federal government to ensure that people do have an easier commute, easier movement of goods, because we are also seeing that that corridor — when you look at Highway 1 — as significant for the movement of goods, and we need to make sure that is as fluid as possible.

It’s a very exciting time to look at the whole picture of how we are evolving through the most densely populated part of our province, in Metro, out through the valley, as well as looking at: what does integrated transportation mean? What does that sort of development mean for the Okanagan, where we’ve already had some work done?

[2:25 p.m.]

How is it going to work in other areas? In the south Island, we’re working on the south Island transportation strategy. The south Island had been ignored for many, many years as well. That’s why we’ve put a focus on that area of south Island transportation — again, looking at it integrated, looking as a whole, not looking piecemeal and saying: “Well, you’ve got that bus lane going in there, so that’s fine.” But what does it mean in the bigger picture? I think these are, really, very exciting times.

As I say, we have the largest investment in infrastructure in B.C.’s history with $7.6 billion through my ministry alone. That includes everything from the Taylor Bridge up in the north, the West Fraser Road — we’re going to be rebuilding the West Fraser Road — to work in the Fraser Valley. There is a huge amount happening both in the areas of the highest concentration as well as areas which are rural and areas which are more remote, because everywhere needs good transportation. People need good highways so they can feel safe. They need good transit links so if they can’t afford to drive, they can get connections.

This is something I’m also very proud of our government for. When Greyhound pulled out of British Columbia, we were able to step in and put in a public bus service in the north, in some of the more challenging areas, the more remote areas, where we knew that people wouldn’t have the ability to travel. Bringing in B.C. Bus North and making sure that people in those remote areas, whether you’re travelling from Fort St. John north or from Prince Rupert south and east…. There would be a regular public bus service. We’ve seen a great uptake on that.

I’m also very proud of what our government has done in the continued investment in the Highway 16 Corridor — again, working with Indigenous communities here — to provide a public bus system so that people have alternatives. Our government is committed to investing in the transportation corridors, investing in the highways of our province, as well as investing in transit.

It would be remiss of me as an Island MLA and somebody who lives on one of the islands not to mention B.C. Ferries. There are 22 million passengers who travel on B.C. Ferries every year. All have been benefiting from our government’s measures to improve service and improve affordability and improve the responsiveness and the links between the B.C. Ferries, as an entity, back to the people whom they’re serving. We put it back in the public interest. We’re putting the public interest into the ferries because of the Ferry Act. So now when the B.C. Ferry Authority is working, and B.C. Ferries, they’ve got to consider the public interest — not a commercial interest, but the interest of the people.

As I say, we are working hard to build those safe, smart transportation solutions for now, as well as the future. One of the big ones that we’ve announced and we’re really proud that we’re moving ahead with…. Again, it was ignored. It was a call from the mayors for years — a piece of infrastructure that people say is falling apart, but it is definitely well past its replacement date. That’s the Pattullo Bridge.

It’s a vital link for people who live in the Lower Mainland. That link between Surrey and New Westminster is absolutely vital. It is one of the oldest bridges in Metro Vancouver. It does need replacing. It’s needed replacing for many, many years. I’m going to say even longer than 16 years but definitely it’s been there on the mayors’ priority list for a long while. We are building it. We’re going to build it.

As with all the infrastructure that we are building, it is going to be toll-free. That means that people who are using this infrastructure will not have to pay to use it. They already pay for it through their taxes. The taxes become public money. We then invest that in infrastructure. I’m extremely pleased that, as we move ahead with the Pattullo, it is going to be toll-free. It’s going to be a better commute.

I know there are a lot of questions. People say: “Well, why is it just four lanes? Why haven’t you gone six lanes?” We listened again. We listened, this government. We listened to the mayors at the time who said that they wanted to have a four-lane bridge that could be expanded to six lanes. It may be, in the future, expanded to six lanes. But at the moment, it is a four-lane bridge.

[2:30 p.m.]

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

I’m very aware that I only have a few minutes left in my speaking. I just really wanted to acknowledge that as we move forward with our projects, whether it’s in the Lower Mainland with something like Pattullo or out on Highway 1, the work we’re doing on Highway 1 and moving into the final phase of the Kicking Horse Canyon, we are making sure that our public investments really provide public benefits.

When we’re doing the major projects, we are using community benefits agreements, which means we’re not just building the infrastructure, but we’re investing in the people of this province. We’re investing in training. We’re investing in opportunity for people who have not had the ability to access work, access training. We’re going to be really ensuring that whether it’s Indigenous people, whether it’s women, whether it’s people who, for whatever reason, haven’t had access to training in these projects will have that.

It’s three projects to start with. At the moment, it’s the Pattullo. It is Broadway, which is a project…. We only get half an hour to speak, unfortunately. I could also be talking about that work that we’re doing. But it’s on that, and it’s on certain of the Highway 1 four-lanings and the Kicking Horse project, which is going to be very, very exciting. I’m looking forward to seeing that one move ahead.

It provides more training, and it really does reflect the values of our government — that we are investing in people, that we want to make opportunities for the people of British Columbia and that we have faith and trust in the people of British Columbia. We’re working, as a ministry, to provide that basic, safe and efficient transportation system but an affordable system and a system that really reflects the values of the people of British Columbia.

With that, I take my place in debate and move adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. D. Eby: I call Bill 7, the Arbitration Act, 2020, com­mittee stage.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 7 — ARBITRATION ACT

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 7; R. Chouhan in the chair.

The committee met at 2:34 p.m.

Hon. D. Eby: Joining me this afternoon in the House to assist, Darryl Hrenyk will be here shortly from the Ministry of the Attorney General, Jonathan Eades and Tarynn McKenzie. I just want recognize that Jonathan and Tarynn have done a lot of work around modernizing both the international arbitration act and now, today, the domestic Arbitration Act and thank them on the record, along with the drafters who worked with them and the whole team on this particular piece of legislation, as well as the international act as well.

I look forward to the questions from the critic.

On section 1.

[2:35 p.m.]

M. Lee: I just wanted to start by asking if the Attorney General could walk us through the process that was followed in terms of consultation and review for this new domestic Arbitration Act?

Hon. D. Eby: The majority of Bill 7 is actually based on the Uniform Law Conference of Canada 2016 uniform act. That bill itself was prepared after lengthy engagements with arbitrators and non-arbitrators to get their feedback.

There is also the Attorney General’s arbitration advisory group. This is a voluntary group comprised of arbitrators, arbitration counsel, litigation counsel, corporate counsel, business people and government representatives. Now, there was a legislative subcommittee of that group, as well, that was established.

One of the legislative subcommittee members was the chair of the Uniform Law Conference of Canada working group who prepared the Uniform Law Conference of Canada 2016 uniform act, so that was a very helpful resource for us to have.

Another member of that subcommittee was part of the original advisory committee who recommended the adoption of the UNCITRAL Model Law as B.C.’s International Commercial Arbitration Act in 1986.

A further member is co-author of the leading text Commercial Arbitration in Canada. So we have quite a distinguished group that has been assisting us throughout this process.

Now, members of that subcommittee addressed the topic of domestic arbitration reform and the government’s objectives, and they addressed that at several different conferences involving arbitrators and non-arbitrators. There were discussions from the floor at those conferences. We specifically requested questions, comments and concerns about the Uniform Law Conference of Canada uniform act that this bill is based on, as well as proposed changes to key provisions from attendees at conferences and invited direct follow-up with the ministry at each conference.

Now, I want to also recognize the BCICAC, which is the arbitration group that we anticipate will be the designated group in the regulations, as they are in the current act. They were also represented on the legislative subcommittee throughout the review and preparation of the amendments to the international act. Many of those carried over into the domestic act.

Then, for the domestic Arbitration Act amendments, this also included multiple meetings with the BCICAC over a two-year period. Either I attended, the Deputy AG attended or ministry staff attended these meetings. Proposed revisions were discussed with the BCICAC board members at length. Given that the BCICAC, which is soon to be the Vancouver international arbitration centre, will have unique and important functions under the reforms, we wanted to make sure there was frequent and continuing dialogue between us and the BCICAC.

M. Lee: Thank you for that overview of the nature of all of the consultation that’s gone on. If I could just ask the Attorney General to comment specifically on the level of consultation that was done with those who are non-arbitrators, those in the business community for whom this new domestic Arbitration Act will be much more user-friendly. If I could get a better sense from the Attorney General about that level of consultation and comment from non-arbitrators.

Hon. D. Eby: As I outlined in my answer, there were many conferences at which both arbitrators and non-arbitrators participated. The uniform law that this is based on was the product of engagement with arbitrators and with non-arbitrators. There are business people and folks from the BCICAC who have been involved in the development of this who work closely with business people and with the business community on this. There were several opportunities for engagement, and that feedback was included in this as well.

M. Lee: With that, the view to be confirmed here is that the Attorney General and his team at the ministry is of the view that this is a workable act, certainly for the business community. Has there been any consultation with other leading business organizations in this province?

[2:40 p.m.]

Hon. D. Eby: I wanted to point out that the BCICAC is not exclusively arbitrators — far from it. There are many business people involved in that group.

Also, the member asked specifically about business organizations. The Vancouver Board of Trade had a representative on the Attorney General advisory group that assisted in the development of this and the international statute.

M. Lee: In terms of the work that was done on this Bill 7, Arbitration Act…. That work was reviewed with the legislative subcommittee, from what I am hearing. Were there any recommendations by that subcommittee that weren’t accepted in the drafting of this act?

Hon. D. Eby: We can’t recall any.

M. Lee: There have been some joint studies that have determined…. There’s a 2018 joint study by Queen Mary University, in London, and White and Case, one of the global law firms out of the U.K., which found that the five most preferred seats of arbitration are London, Paris, Singapore, Hong Kong and Geneva.

In the nature of ensuring that British Columbia and Vancouver continue to be a leading global centre for arbitration, both internationally and domestically, was there any inclusion of experts from any of those jurisdictions as part of this review and makeup for this new act?

Hon. D. Eby: One thing that we were not short of was expertise, both domestic and international, although I do underline that this is the domestic act that is proposed to be replaced here today.

Henri Alvarez was one of the participants in the Attorney General advisory group. I’m advised that he would be considered one of the top 20 international arbitrators in the world, arbitrates around the world. Gerry Ghikas, the same — a very well-recognized international arbitrator. He worked in Europe and also in the United States.

Then to my right, Jonathan Eades, who is in the Ministry of Attorney General, is an arbitrator, himself, of considerable talent, who worked in Paris, Geneva and Washington.

So both in-house and outside of house, we had international experts in arbitration bringing their expertise to this — the domestic act amendments.

M. Lee: Just turning to the definition of “arbitral tribunal.” That term is not set out in the Uniform Law Conference of Canada’s model law, which, of course, we’ve covered as being a key touchstone for this bill. However, the definition is the same as what is set out in UNCITRAL’s model law. So which was the model for this particular definition, and why was that the case?

Hon. D. Eby: The member may notice, as we go through, that there are pieces that do depart from the model domestic law but are consistent with the model international law — the UNCITRAL model. The goal was to find harmonies between the domestic and the international act, assuming that British Columbia arbitrators would be working in both areas.

[2:45 p.m.]

Enabling those practitioners to move seamlessly between the acts as much as possible was a great benefit. So where possible, staff tried to find the appropriate harmony between the two in order that, in B.C., we could have acts that make sense for people who practise here as well as people who come from international jurisdictions to British Columbia for an arbitration.

M. Lee: I just wanted to come to the next definition, which is the “designated appointing authority.” That was one definition that I noted in my second reading remarks and the Attorney General responded to. Perhaps we can just recap that discussion.

The reason why I raised it is that through the long-standing nature of the British Columbia International Commercial Arbitration Centre, there’s been tremendous support over successive governments for the importance of that organization. It has been seen to be a leading organization with respect to both international and domestic arbitration. As the Attorney General confirmed in his second reading speech, it is the intention — through regulation, of course; through section 67 — that that centre be designated as the designated appointing authority for the purpose of this act.

I have raised, and I would raise here again at this committee stage, the importance of this centre. Certainly, my expectation would be that the government and the ministry agree that the centre should serve this important role under this act as the designated appointing authority and that the reason why it’s not named in the act is around a name change. It is the intention of the centre to change its name to the Vancouver international arbitration centre.

On that first reasoning that was provided at second reading, as I understand it in my follow-on discussion with the centre, it’s the intention of the centre, certainly, to make that change but that it would not change its name legally — that the foundation name, which is the BCICAC Foundation, will still be the legal name of that organization. Any subsequent name change is really a branding initiative. It’s not a formal legal name change, which I would have suggested, in any event. The organization we know “formerly known as the BCICAC Foundation” would have been sufficient for the purpose.

On that first point, perhaps I could ask the Attorney General why it is that we would need to do it by regulation. My view would be that we can give the centre the prominence it has earned and continues to provide in the role that it plays in this province and therefore have the BCICAC Foundation name, which is the legal name, set out in the act itself. So then when parties, non-arbiters, are looking and navigating through this act, they will easily see where they can turn to as the designated appointing authority being that centre.

If I could ask the Attorney General to further address that point.

Hon. D. Eby: I am concerned that there’s a perception that by putting the BCICAC — the Vancouver international arbitration centre, as they’re going to become — into the regulations, it’s somehow seen to be less of, for some reason, for this organization. They will have a head-and-shoulders advantage over any other service provider in Canada because they’re specifically named in the regulations and will be the designated appointing authority. It’s a great honour. It’s a great recognition of their work.

[2:50 p.m.]

There’s a statutory practice, which is a good one…. To enshrine a specific organizational name into your statute is to invite the possibility that something happens to the organization. There’s a financial crisis, and they become bankrupt or insolvent. The board resigns, and the organization dissolves. They change their name. Something else happens that causes you or them to require a change. Then you have to assemble the Legislature and pass an amendment to the statute. When you put it in the regulation, then you can make those amendments far more easily.

The intent of the statute, the intent of this section is that there will be a designated appointing authority. I’m advising the member and the House that it’s government’s intention to appoint currently the BCICAC as that. It’s my understanding that in the regs it will be called the Vancouver international arbitration centre. That has the advantage of avoiding brand confusion. It has the advantage of being futureproof, and it recommends itself in a number of ways.

It is not to take anything away. In fact, in this new statute, they will have a number of significant advantages that other similar organizations in other provinces simply don’t have.

M. Lee: Well, I think that the main consideration, I believe, is with the length of this act — that the desire is to make it user-friendly. I appreciate the consideration around an organization that might go bankrupt or the board resigns en masse or a number of things like that.

But this is not a new organization. This is an organization for which both the international and domestic arbitration acts in this province have governed over many, many years. With all of the significant buildup, including in contractual agreements that I used to work on as a lawyer for 20 years, there’s reference to that centre in many contracts in this province.

So the stability of that organization I don’t think is at question here. I don’t believe I’m hearing the Attorney General question that. Nor am I hearing the Attorney General question whether there’s any possibility that the centre will not be named by regulation as the designated appointing authority.

With that in mind, I would like to table an amendment to have the BCICAC foundation name directly put in this act so that parties can readily identify who the designated appointing authority is so that — whether they’re lawyers or non-arbiters or other business parties — they won’t have to go search out and find indirectly, through regulation, who that designated appointing authority is.

I believe, in proposing this amendment, that this would be a simple amendment, which I can pass through you to others here, to this act for that purpose.

[Section 1 by deleting the text shown as struck out and adding the underlined text as shown

“designated appointing authority” means the entity designated under section 67 [designated appointing authority] the BCICAC Foundation (the British Columbia International Commercial Arbitration Centre Foundation);]

On the amendment.

Hon. D. Eby: I’d urge members to vote against the amendment, not because of the spirit of it, which is certainly to recognize what is government’s intention, but just to recognize good statutory practice, which is not to enshrine the name of an organization that is changing its name into an act when it’s going to be reflected in the regulations. Any practitioner of arbitration or anyone sophisticated enough to look up the act would also be looking at the regulations, necessarily. It doesn’t address an issue, and, in fact, it potentially creates issues of brand confusion.

[2:55 p.m.]

M. Lee: Speaking to the amendment, I understand the Attorney General’s view on that in terms of the name. But again, it demonstrates, perhaps in a small way, the level of consultation that’s occurred with the centre, because I understand, in my communication with the centre today, that they have no intention of changing the legal name to the Vancouver international arbitration centre. This will be, effectively, a brand name, which….

There may be other considerations about how an organization will have their legal name being the BCICAC foundation, which is still the same legal name they have today, and what I’m proposing in my amendment that I just tabled — to be directly placed in this definition in the act — and also being known in the future as the Vancouver international arbitration centre.

That, as I understand in speaking with individuals representing the centre, is merely a branding initiative, and the legal name will not change. So I don’t believe that there would be any confusion that my amendment would bring on by virtue of directly putting the legal name of that centre in the act.

Amendment negatived.

M. Lee: If I can ask, on the definition of “interim measure,” where has the genesis of that definition derived from? I think it is potentially making a slight departure from the UNCITRAL Model Law.

Hon. D. Eby: That definition is in the UNCITRAL Model Law, as well as in the domestic model law, and it’s put up at the front as a drafting practice for ease of reference.

M. Lee: That includes sub (e). Is that correct?

Hon. D. Eby: Yes.

M. Lee: The definition of “place of arbitration” — where was that definition derived from?

Hon. D. Eby: It’s slightly modified from the Uniform Law Conference of Canada model law. In that engagement with the Attorney General’s advisory group, for some people, it’s their practice to refer to the place of arbitration. For others, it’s their practice to refer to the seat of arbitration. To avoid confusion, the definition was included just to be that a place of arbitration means either a place or a seat of arbitration.

Section 1 approved.

On section 2.

M. Lee: Dealing with the application of this bill, or the act, if the Attorney General can share any statistics on the estimates around how many domestic arbitrations are occurring in any given year, pursuant to the domestic arbitration act.

[3:00 p.m.]

Hon. D. Eby: Part of what some people appreciate about arbitration is that they can have a private arbitration — it’s just between the parties — and have the matter decided quickly, efficiently and privately. So it is difficult to know how many arbitrations there are in the province. For those in which there is involvement of the BCICAC, staff advised me that that number would be in the hundreds but that there are many of these ad hoc arbitrations that would not be recorded in any of that data that the BCICAC would record.

M. Lee: Just in terms of the Uniform Law Commission’s model law, there are differences in this particular section from the equivalent section under that model law. Could I ask the Attorney General to explain the significance of any of those differences?

Hon. D. Eby: The purpose of this section is to set out when B.C.’s domestic Arbitration Act does and does not apply. Under the existing act, it provides that it applies to an arbitration agreement in a commercial agreement, an arbitration authorized by another enactment, any other arbitration agreement or a family law arbitration. The present act does not apply to several listed trade agreements or agreements between governments, with some very limited and particularized exceptions.

Now, the significance of the section that the member has asked the question about is that first of all, it’s based on a provision from the Uniform Law Conference of Canada — as he notes, the Uniform Arbitration Act. Application is determined by whether the place of arbitration is in British Columbia.

The proposed provision provides expansive default rules for determining when the place of arbitration is in British Columbia. Specifically, subsection (4) confirms that certain specified provisions of the act apply “…whether or not the place of arbitration is in British Columbia.” This is needed for circumstances when parties outside of B.C. seek various forms of relief from B.C. courts, including stays of court proceedings and enforcement of non-international arbitral awards.

Subsection (5) provides that the act does not apply to arbitrations covered by the ICAA, the International Commercial Arbitration Act, family law arbitrations, several prescribed trade agreements or agreements between governments, with limited, particularized exceptions. The ICAA is, of course, our B.C. statute for international arbitrations. Regulations under the act will prescribe agreements — including the New West Partnership Trade Agreement, the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement and others that are referenced in the current act — as not being included.

Subsection (6) clarifies that the act applies with any necessary modifications if another enactment authorizes or requires arbitration.

Section 2 approved.

On section 3.

M. Lee: Just looking at this particular section deeming waiver of right to object. Again, in comparison with the ULCC’s model law, there are certain carve-outs that are in section 3 of the ULCC model law. If I could ask the Attorney General to comment on those particular carve-outs and where they sit within this section or other portions of the act itself.

Hon. D. Eby: The ideas behind the model domestic law and the international act in British Columbia are the same — meant to be captured in this section, the same ideas as with the model domestic law. However, the advice that we received from the AG advisory group was that it would be a good idea, and good practice, to include section 4 of the International Commercial Arbitration Act in British Columbia, to ensure consistency between the two acts for domestic practitioners.

[3:05 p.m.]

Given that the ideas conveyed and the purpose are the same, it provided ease of reference for people, but also, in the event that something did go to court or there was some interpretation of this section, that it would apply equally to both sections as well. It’s been very slightly restructured from the international commercial arbitration provision to comply with our domestic drafting standards.

Section 3 approved.

On section 4.

M. Lee: My colleague, the member for Abbotsford West, will also have some additional questions which I think are appropriately raised on this particular section in respect to the bill itself.

Just before we go there, on the more technical point, this particular section relating to judicial intervention, the nature of these provisions is also somewhat different from the ULCC model law. There are some departures which I’d, again, like the Attorney General to explain — of any significance that are set out there.

Hon. D. Eby: This is largely the same answer as I gave for the previous section.

It harmonizes the domestic act with, this time, section 5 of the International Commercial Arbitration Act. The member will note that in 4(b)(ii), there is an additional protection there for the designated appointing authority that we were talking about before, the BCICAC.

I do want to underline the importance of this section because there can be confusion in the courts. It’s to underline that arbitration and administrative law are different regimes. It’s important for lawyers, practitioners, others, judges to recognize that an arbitrational tribunal is not an administrative law decision-maker, and the review standards are different and should be different, because arbitration is set up in a way to provide a quick and an efficient determination of disputes, and the parties are intended to agree that that determination is final and binding. We want to give people capacity to be able to agree to that among themselves. So this section really underlines that.

M. de Jong: The part of the bill we’re considering, sections 1 through 4, “Interpretation and Application” — I’ve just got a few questions. I want to assure the Attorney General that I’m not intending to spend a whole bunch of time on this, but the line of questioning relates to, broadly, application. It may actually have been more appropriate to consider the questions as part of section 2, but I hope the Attorney will, when he’s heard the questions, see fit to try to answer some of these questions.

It relates back to the discussion we had in the fall that led to the passage of the UNDRIP legislation. This bill and this reconfiguration of the rules around arbitration and the Arbitration Act might be the first example of a rewrite of legislation to occur since that legislation enshrining the UN declaration has taken place and was proclaimed in British Columbia.

[3:10 p.m.]

The member for Vancouver-Langara and I had an extensive discussion with the Attorney General’s colleague about the process that would be followed with respect to adjusting the laws and aligning the laws.

The law in British Columbia, section 3 of that statute, says: “In consultation and cooperation with the Indigenous peoples in British Columbia, the government must take all measures necessary to ensure the laws of British Columbia are consistent with the Declaration.”

The Attorney’s colleague spoke about a process and a lens that would be created that, I got the impression, would have application in a case like this where laws are being rewritten. So I’m curious whether that lens and that process was applied here. If it was, how was it? If it was, how has it impacted, if at all, the product that we have before us in the assembly today, in the committee today?

Hon. D. Eby: Now, I’m not aware of any inconsistency between this act and the UNDRIP legislation, but I don’t understand the member to be suggesting that there is any such inconsistency. It is certainly an intellectually interesting question. Given that the UNCITRAL Model bill is a UN document and the UN declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples is, similarly, a UN document and the documents are coming from the same international body, one presumes, at a minimum, they would be consistent. But knowing real life and legislation, that’s not always the case.

The interesting thing about arbitration and one of the potentially enabling pieces of the legislation is that the parties can agree about whichever legal standards they would wish to apply, which could include departing from British Columbia law in order to have the matter resolved. So theoretically, it’s certainly potential for an Indigenous organization or a First Nation to use this act and to use legal standards that they felt were most appropriate for them.

This is a voluntary statute in the sense that the court system remains. It doesn’t displace the court system. This is for parties who by agreement, by contract or otherwise go into the arbitral process. It sets out the guidelines for that, but the parties can agree among themselves to apply whatever legal standards they wish.

I’m not sure this is a great example of legislation affecting Indigenous people or concern around inconsistency between domestic legislation. But all legislation that the government brings forward…. My colleague is correct. Certainly, part of the assessment that we do and part of the discussion that we have is about whether it has an impact on Indigenous people and if so, how. If it does, what is our obligation in terms of consultation and engagement?

M. de Jong: All of that is helpful. When we had the conversation with the Attorney’s colleague, he had this to say about the process that we could expect, going forward, following the proclamation of the UN declaration.

[3:15 p.m.]

“If there are new laws,” he said, “new legislation coming forward, then we’ll work with them” — Indigenous peoples — “on those to make sure that the measures we do take to align laws with the declaration are consistent with that action plan and the priorities that we work with them on.” He continued: “This, of course…. Section 3 is specifically entitled — the measures to align laws with the declaration.”

He seemed, in the course of that statement and elsewhere in the conversation we had with him, to speak to, going forward, a specific process or procedure for engagement. The Attorney has mentioned a general intention on the part of government. But consistent with what the Attorney’s colleague said, was there specific engagement with Indigenous peoples around this piece of legislation?

Hon. D. Eby: The member will know that under previous administrations, just like under this administration, there has been an interest in arbitration and ensuring that British Columbia has a regime that makes sense to people.

I am not aware, ever, of an opposition raising concern about potential impact on Indigenous rights or inconsistency with the human rights of Indigenous people and arbitration-related initiatives — and for good reason. I don’t think there is any inconsistency. I don’t hear the member raising any inconsistency, any concern at all.

Taking his question, assuming it is in a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than mischief-making, I would say that there is no, to my mind, apparent inconsistency, any threat of any potential concern in relation to the rights of Indigenous people in relation to this act. But every piece of legislation does go through that lens, including this one. I can advise the member that we’re not aware of any impingement or risk here, especially given the fact that this is a voluntary regime that you can either participate in or not. It’s up to you.

But if the member is particularly interested in Indigenous justice issues and those kinds of things, we have a very significant two-year-long engagement that’s been going on with the First Nations Justice Council in developing an Indigenous justice strategy. That may be what the member is referring to when he’s curious about whether we’re talking to Indigenous people about how they resolve concerns, how the state interacts with Indigenous people in relation to the justice system — writ large, how we incorporate Indigenous law into our justice system.

That conversation is ongoing. The draft strategy is under active consideration by Indigenous leadership groups and was a product of many, many engagements across the province. Perhaps that is what the member is referring to. This is not that. This is totally different.

M. de Jong: Look, I get the sense that this is rapidly descending into some kind of an argumentative thing, which I don’t intend it to do. It is not necessarily an intellectual curiosity, although that’s an interesting turn of phrase.

In November of last year, the government, through its representative and in securing unanimous support for a piece of legislation, described a very different process — in fact, a statutorily dictated different process. He described in detail how that was driven by the terms of the legislation that was before the House at that time.

[3:20 p.m.]

We are curious to know how, if at all, that new process, which is now a requirement under section 3 of the UNDRIP legislation, played out with respect to the preparation and presentation of this legislation. What I think I hear the Attorney General saying is that it did not — that there has been an exercise in place for some time and that he and the government followed that exercise, and there was nothing different about this.

That’s fine if that’s…. That wasn’t the impression that we were left with when his colleague the Minister of Indigenous Relations spoke to us.

Look, I don’t know if there is anything in this legislation that Indigenous peoples would be concerned with, if there’s anything in this legislation that might preclude an approach to arbitration that is unique to Indigenous peoples. I don’t know that.

I do know that the government and the minister’s colleague said, only a few months ago, that following passage of the UN declaration legislation into law, there would be a very different exercise procedure employed. If it wasn’t, that’s fine. Then I have my answer. But if it was, then I am legitimately curious about what that exercise was or what that different procedure was.

Hon. D. Eby: In relation to Indigenous people in the province, the question wasn’t: do you like the Arbitration Act or not? There was not an engagement: do you like the Arbitration Act or not? Do you have feedback on that?

The engagement was one step back. It was: how does the justice system work for you? How can it work better for you? The Arbitration Act is one part of British Columbia’s justice system. I acknowledge the member’s question. We could have gone and said: “Do you like the Arbitration Act or not?”

We took a step back, and we said: “How does the justice system work for you?” They said: “Not especially well, as a matter of fact. We don’t see ourselves represented. We don’t see our laws represented. We see a disproportionate number of our community members in jail. We see a connection between the child welfare system and jails. We don’t find that it assists us in resolving disputes in various ways, various disputes that we might have at the nation level, at the local level. So we think you need a justice strategy for Indigenous people.”

So it would be a bit strange to go and say, “Do you like this one piece of the justice system that we’re doing?” when in fact we’re engaged in a multi-year strategy with Indigenous people about ensuring that their concerns in relation to justice are addressed.

I take the member’s question, now that I understand it a little bit better, about whether this specific act was taken to a leadership group or workshops with Indigenous people or otherwise. It was not. What went to a leadership group and workshops with Indigenous people, justice leaders and others was a much bigger question that encompasses the justice system as a whole.

I am very much looking forward to the justice strategy that is coming from that setting out a course for us to reconciliation with Indigenous people through the justice system and supporting those communities and First Nations in resolving disputes to the extent the government is able.

M. de Jong: Well, that too is a helpful answer. I think the Attorney has cottoned on to the nature of my inquiry.

Am I then to understand that with respect to legislation emanating from the Attorney’s ministry, that broader approach is the one that will be followed? I will say — and I won’t speak for the member for Vancouver-Langara — that I was left with the impression, perhaps incorrectly, when I re-read the remarks from the minister’s colleague, that with respect to legislation, particularly wholesale rewrites of legislation, there was going to be a more specific process employed and a more specific engagement of the sort that the Attorney has mentioned.

[3:25 p.m.]

That doesn’t appear to be the case. That more general approach that the Attorney has described — is that what we should expect going forward, with respect to at least legislation from the Attorney General’s ministry? I won’t ask him to comment on other departments and other ministries of government. Would it be incorrect for me to assume, with respect to legislative initiatives of this sort, that there would be more direct involvement or a more specific review undertaken by Indigenous leadership groups?

Hon. D. Eby: Any time there would be an apparent or even a speculative impact on Indigenous rights, the member could reasonably expect that my ministry would be engaging with Indigenous people about that as part of the process that we committed to through the UNDRIP legislation.

In terms of the justice system as a whole, with clear recognition of the fact that government capacity, First Nations capacity, is what it is, which is limited on both sides, we — it wasn’t just us; in cooperation, engagement and consultation with First Nations people — felt it much better to ask the big question: where are we going with the justice system? How do we get to where we need to be with the justice system from a First Nations perspective? What’s our strategy? We’ve been working on that for a couple of years.

That is definitely a keystone piece within my ministry. So the member can reasonably expect that on justice-related matters, that is our engagement with First Nations people, our partnership with them on creating a justice system that works for them and that works for British Columbia as a whole, because it doesn’t work for British Columbia when 30 percent of the population in prison are Indigenous people and that that’s gone up from 10 percent in the ’90s. That’s not an acceptable situation.

That’s just one example. There are much larger examples around dispute resolution, generally, in the context of the Arbitration Act, how First Nations are able to or are facilitated to reach resolution around issues to the extent that they wish assistance or support from government on that. So, yes — short answer to the member’s question. That is the UNDRIP piece within the Ministry of Attorney General, and it encompasses the entirety of how the justice system works with Indigenous people.

M. de Jong: I think my last question on this point…. When the Attorney’s colleague was discussing the procedure going forward, he talked about the obligation that each ministry would assume for the development of a workplan. In fact, that’s a term used in the previous legislation.

Is the process that the Attorney has just described part of the workplan for the UN declaration on Indigenous rights as it relates to the Attorney General’s ministry? If it is, I’m interested to know that. If it isn’t, at what stage is the development of that workplan that the Attorney’s colleague referred to within the Attorney General’s ministry?

Hon. D. Eby: The idea behind the UNDRIP legislation is partnership with Indigenous people. I do feel we’re getting a bit away from the bill, but in any event…. The member does know I’ll be up in estimates in the very near future, and I’d be happy to canvass these with him.

[S. Gibson in the chair.]

But the idea behind the UNDRIP legislation is partnership with Indigenous people. I can’t think of a better partnership for the Ministry of Attorney General than to go to Indigenous people and say, “How can we improve the justice system?”— to come up with a plan, for them to come up with a plan and for government to work with Indigenous people on the realization of that plan. That plan is our workplan. It will be our workplan for many years, and I look forward to working with Indigenous people on that.

[3:30 p.m.]

M. Lee: I appreciate the nature of this discussion and do think it’s appropriate to have in the lead-up to the delivery by the government of the action plan that’s contemplated under section 4 of Bill 41. There’s an expectation that that action plan will be determined by this government with First Nations leadership. That was what the member for Abbotsford West and myself heard from the Attorney General’s colleague, the Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, through the lengthy committee debate and discussion about that bill.

In the absence of clarity around what that action plan looks like, in my view, it’s an appropriate question to be asking about every single piece of legislation that this government introduces in this House. Certainly, we will have the opportunity in the near-term future. The briefing that I was pulled out of to go through this committee process at this time was Bill 13, the misc stats bill. There certainly are aspects of that bill which…. Certainly, the government has gone about to ensure that the laws of British Columbia are consistent with the declaration. In many cases, you find, for example, changes in terminology between the use of the term “Aboriginal peoples” to “Indigenous peoples.”

I think there is certainly going to be progress that this government is making. You would expect, to meet the requirement under Bill 41, that this government must take all measures necessary to ensure the laws of British Columbia are consistent with the declaration. I do think it is more than just an intellectual exercise that we’re going through. I think it’s a real discussion to be having at this juncture.

For example, and this is how I would frame the question for the Attorney General to address, we know that article 40 of UNDRIP refers to Indigenous peoples having “…the right to access to and prompt decision through just and fair procedures for the resolution of conflicts and disputes with States or other parties” — in this case, dealing with the Arbitration Act, we’re dealing with parties — “as well as to effective remedies for all infringements of their individual and collective rights. Such a decision shall give due consideration to the customs, traditions, rules and legal systems of the Indigenous peoples concerned and international human rights.”

I would have thought, of course, that the exercise the government would be doing through its ministry, when it’s looking at legislation that it’s proposing in this House since the passage of Bill 41 — that that review would be taking place.

I do appreciate and I do understand in terms of the previous discussions with the Attorney General — and by his invitation to my colleague, the member for Prince George–Valemount, and myself, in each of our critic roles, to attend Justice Summit…. So we’re certainly aware, through that lens and through other visits to First Nations courts, of the initiatives that the Attorney General has in looking at the entire strategy — the justice strategy dealing with Indigenous peoples here in this province. But I believe that that is actually a separate discussion.

What’s required under Bill 41 is a specific review to ensure the consistency with UNDRIP. That is what this government committed this province to do under Bill 41. So again, to the Attorney General, if he could please comment on whether there was any review done by this government, by the Attorney General’s ministry, on this particular bill that’s tabled here in this House against article 40 or any other applicable articles to UNDRIP as attached to Bill 41.

Hon. D. Eby: As I advised the member for Abbotsford West, every piece of legislation that we bring forward, if it’s seen as having any impact on Indigenous rights, whether material or speculative, then we would engage with First Nations on that issue. I’m not aware of any inconsistency or any even speculative inconsistency with UNDRIP, and I welcome the member to provide any that he is concerned about.

[3:35 p.m.]

M. Lee: We spent, at length, time permitting, the opportunity to go through the various articles of UNDRIP. Knowing the nature of these principles that were attached to Bill 41, I think they are high-level principles for which there was quite an extensive discussion around their applicability in British Columbia and in this country. So when we look at article 40, I would have thought that there would be some consideration about the customs, traditions, rules and legal systems of Indigenous peoples and how any decision through an arbitration process under this domestic Arbitration Act would impact or be formulated in a consistent nature to those customs, traditions rules and legal systems of Indigenous peoples.

That, I think, is what article 40 is speaking to. From my viewpoint, having looked at this only in the days that this government tabled this bill for consideration in this House, I would have expected that there would be a more detailed consideration around that.

Again to the Attorney General, can I ask him to comment on the specific nature of article 40 and whether there are specific components of that article that were considered in the design of this commercial arbitration act?

Hon. D. Eby: As I advised the member, we did a review of the proposed legislation and did not see any inconsistency with the UNDRIP legislation or any other aspect of Indigenous rights. Maybe the member doesn’t understand — it’s possible he doesn’t — how arbitration works. You have to agree to participate, and it’s party-driven. You can set your own legal standards. It’s not coercive. It’s not the state compelling anyone to do anything.

With respect to how Indigenous people resolve their own disputes and whether they want to use the Arbitration Act or not, it’s totally up to them. If they want to go through the justice strategy, prioritize having Indigenous-based resolution of issues — whether they’re commercial, interpersonal, family or otherwise — that is the mechanism by which we will be working with First Nations people on ensuring that they have dispute resolution processes that work for them.

M. Lee: I appreciate that arbitration under this act is certainly voluntary, with the parties having to agree in terms of this application and go through the designated appointing authority, being the BCICAC, by regulation. I appreciate that that will be the case.

Perhaps I could ask the Attorney General to explain to this House how an arbitration process will take into account the customs, traditions, rules and legal systems of Indigenous peoples. How would that work under this act?

Hon. D. Eby: I talked about the legal standards that can be determined by the parties, which could include any number of First Nations traditions, legal perspectives or otherwise. The process is similarly flexible, and hearings or processes could look like anything that the parties wish them to look like. Remote communities could be accommodated through video conference and other processes.

[3:40 p.m.]

This is a very flexible statute that enables parties to choose the ways in which they want to resolve their disputes. So I’m struggling to understand the member’s concern about inconsistency, given that this is a party-driven process. Any party that felt that their views or legal standards or traditions were not being respected simply would not participate in the arbitration — they would just go to court — which will remain an option.

M. Lee: I do appreciate the time that we’re taking on this particular consideration around this bill, just to further the context around why members on this side of the House, and I think all members of this House, should want to focus on this. It’s because, as we know, there are many disputes in this province today. There will be disputes tomorrow and the day after. To the extent that the Arbitration Act or any other legislation that this House is passing is subject to further expectations, let’s say, by First Nations leadership or Indigenous peoples not being met, by virtue of the heightened expectation on the implementation of Bill 41, that’s exactly why we’re having this discussion today.

It’s entirely possible, I would expect, that when the government goes through and completes this exercise around the action plan, an exercise that we had heard, from the Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, would take a matter of months…. Well, now we’re closing in on four to five months. We will have the opportunity, of course, to get an update from the minister in estimates as to the status of that action plan.

But in the absence of understanding about the steps that are being taken in that action plan, I do know…. As the member for Abbotsford West was taking us through some of the quotes, the statements, that the minister had made in the committee stage debate on Bill 41, he was very careful to say that the exercise to review and ensure that the laws of British Columbia are consistent with the declaration would be something that government wouldn’t dictate to Indigenous peoples. That would be something that would be done jointly. That’s the reason why there’s section 4 of Bill 41 itself that contemplates consultation and involvement with Indigenous peoples.

I appreciate what the Attorney General is saying, and he’s confirmed to this House today that the assessment has been done and that in their view, there is no inconsistency with the declaration, but I would like to question that part of it. It seems to me that the understanding my colleague the member for Abbotsford West and myself had on Bill 41, that there would be a joint consultation-determined action plan — I’m not hearing that that has actually occurred in this case.

Is there any consideration around the lack of consultation with Indigenous peoples on the exercise to ensure that this bill, as presented, is consistent with the declaration?

Hon. D. Eby: I guess it’s a matter of perspective about what the Ministry of Attorney General has done here. The member believes that the most appropriate course of action under the UNDRIP statute would be to engage on the Arbitration Act and say, “Do you like the Arbitration Act? Don’t you like the Arbitration Act?” even though there is no apparent nexus with any potential infringement or compromising inconsistency or other issue with Indigenous rights.

That’s his test about whether we’ve met the standard of the act. My test is: does the justice system work for Indigenous people? I know the answer is no, because I worked for a lot of Indigenous people, and the justice system didn’t work for them. When we go to Indigenous people, and say, “Does the justice system work for you?” and they say, “No, it does not,” and they come up with a plan about how we can make the justice system work for them over a two-year process and engagement with justice workers and Indigenous people across the province, about how we can design a dispute resolution process that works for Indigenous people…. That’s what the justice system is. It’s entirely a dispute resolution process. That seems to me to be entirely in the spirit of UNDRIP and a remarkable and, frankly, historic engagement with Indigenous people on justice issues, of which arbitration is one example.

[3:45 p.m.]

The member says there hasn’t been enough engagement. It’s his perspective; it’s not my perspective. My perspective is we are doing historic engagement with Indigenous people about dispute resolution and the justice system.

The member is invited anytime to sit down and provide feedback on the justice strategy, and he’s had the opportunity to be at some of these remarkable meetings with Indigenous people where we went through that whole process together. He sat at those tables, so I know he’s aware of the engagement. He just doesn’t feel that it applies adequately to this bill. We have different perspectives on that.

M. Lee: I appreciate the Attorney General’s response and certainly the workup around the justice strategy and the process that the Attorney General has been going through. As I said earlier, I appreciate — through justice summits and otherwise — being informed and having some level of input and some discussion, at least, in those forums for discussion.

As I mentioned previously, my concern, though, is compliance with Bill 41. I appreciate the Attorney General’s response on that, which is at a different level of response referring to the overall review and how the justice system is not working for Indigenous peoples in this province and how it can be improved. I recognize and acknowledge that effort.

All I’m focused on, as was my colleague from Abbotsford West, is how Bill 41…. The commitment, the expectation — heightened as it is in this province — the lack of clarity in the absence of the action plan, the absence of any public review…. The 23 hours we spent in committee session was to get a better understanding of those provisions and how it would work.

This, in some sense, is a continuation of that. Again, Mr. Chair, as I say, the reason for that, in part, is because we don’t have the action plan in front of us. So this will be an important line of inquiry for some bills. I’ve heard the Attorney General’s explanation of his review, or his response, on this. But I will just register my concern that I would hope and urge that this government comes to its action plan so that we have better clarity as to how bills like this are being reviewed and consulted upon for the purpose of compliance with Bill 41.

Having said that, I’m going to now, if I can, move to another question. We are completing section 4. So I’m going to suggest that we can vote on that section, and I’ll continue with other sections to follow.

The Chair: Any further discussion on section 4?

Section 4 approved.

On section 5.

M. Lee: I just have a few more questions like this, which are similar, and the Attorney General may refer back to some of his previous responses, but it’s just this consideration around section 5. Again, there are some differences with the ULCC model law. Again, if the Attorney General can comment on whether any of those differences are significant or substantive.

Hon. D. Eby: The difference is subsection 4, and the section reads: “The reference in a contract to a document containing an arbitration clause constitutes an arbitration agreement if the reference is such as to make that arbitration clause part of the contract.” So everything else in the section is Uniform Law Conference of Canada model law. Subsection 4 has been added from the international arbitration act that we’ve been referring to. It specifically is to recognize that if there is a reference in a contract, if there is an arbitration clause in a contract, that is considered an arbitration agreement.

[3:50 p.m.]

Again, it provides that harmony between the international and the domestic for ease of practitioners moving back and forth between the two.

Section 5 approved.

On section 6.

M. Lee: I just wanted the Attorney General…. If he could comment on the reference here in terms of the Scott v. Avery clauses, those types of clauses — whether there is broad consensus on the utilization of this type of clause.

Hon. D. Eby: These clauses relate to a case called Scott v. Avery, and they require duplicate effort — first, arbitrate, and then, litigate. It’s contrary to the spirit of arbitration, which is intended to be final and binding dispute resolution. There are many common-law jurisdictions…. In fact, to our knowledge, all Canadian common-law jurisdictions override Scott v. Avery. Instead of treating such clauses as void, the statutory language deems them to be arbitration agreements. This permits the parties to resolve their disputes by final and binding arbitration without the need to subsequently litigate the dispute. The proposed modernized language is Uniform Law Conference of Canada–recommended, in addition to being consistent with other common-law jurisdictions in Canada.

Sections 6 to 13 inclusive approved.

On section 14.

M. Lee: Just on section 14, “Appointment of arbitrator.” This section provides for a significant role for the designated appointing authority, in that when “…the parties fail to agree on the arbitrator, the designated appointing authority must, on request of a party, appoint the arbitrator.” Could I ask: how frequently would the expectation be that parties, when there is a case of two appointed arbitrators, fail to agree to the third one? How often do we expect that this provision will actually be utilized?

Hon. D. Eby: The member is right. The purpose of this section is to ensure there are mechanisms for the appointment of arbitrators, whether by party agreement or statutory default, and that it operates efficiently and fairly. This is something that the BCICAC already does as part of their book of business.

We don’t have a handy statistic for the member about how often they find themselves in that situation. Again, that would be one subsection of, potentially, all the arbitrations taking place in British Columbia, because there may be — there likely are — arbitrations taking place without BCICAC involvement. So even if we had that data, we couldn’t provide a comprehensive number.

[3:55 p.m.]

But it is important, because arbitration can be hampered when there is no agreed appointment process or the agreed appointment process fails. The international act has a legislated backstop for arbitrator appointment in the absence of party agreement. The recommended provision here closely tracks the ICAA language with modifications for our domestic context.

The member will note that this section deals with two related subjects: first, what happens if the parties don’t agree on a process; second, if there is an agreement but one or more of the participants in the appointment process fails to act. Obviously, to my mind, it wouldn’t be the majority, but it certainly is something that seems realistic, in terms of a potential need for the act to respond to.

The proposed provision will ensure — in the absence of agreement or if there’s an impasse — that BCICAC, as the designated authority, will appoint an arbitrator. In the domestic context, the BCICAC is better placed than…. Some might think the chief justice would be well placed to make an appointment, given that the chief justice is the statutory default appointment authority in the ICAA, the international act. But given BCICAC’s access to the names of arbitrators and its knowledge of arbitrator expertise within B.C. in the domestic context, we felt it made more sense to have them take on this role.

If the BCICAC fails to make an appointment within seven days of a request to do so, the court then takes on jurisdiction to make an appointment on application. That’s a fail-safe to the fail-safe.

M. Lee: I just wanted to ask the Attorney General if he could also comment on the expectation around the BCICAC in terms of its role under this act. What expectations…? They have, of course, their own rules for the centre — which, I understand, will be streamlined in the context of what is set out in this statute. If the Attorney General could comment on what his expectation is for the centre in terms of the rules themselves. What changes will be made to those rules, and what changes might be made to the governance structure of the centre as it fulfils its role under this domestic Arbitration Act?

Hon. D. Eby: The centre is a private organization, and they will make decisions about governance and their rules. The member is right, though, in that the centre is engaging with the Ministry of Attorney General staff regularly, to discuss some of their intentions in relation to the rules. We understand them to be adjusting their rules to dovetail with the new act and that that work is underway as we speak, to make sure that the rules are consistent with the new act.

For example, the BCICAC would have a new function under this legislation, which is to resolve disputes with respect to fees — this is something they haven’t done before — in order to expedite the delivery of an arbitration award. So they’ll need new rules to incorporate that. That’s one example of where they are surely looking at changes to the rules. I’m not aware of any changes to governance in terms of the organization — again, a private entity that will make those decisions about what best suits their organization.

Sections 14 to 51 inclusive approved.

On section 52.

[4:00 p.m.]

M. Lee: Just to ask the Attorney General. The nature of the importance of these roles — that is, to withhold an arbitral award…. What is contemplated in terms of the ability of the function that the BCICAC will be playing under this provision as the “designated appointing authority”?

Hon. D. Eby: This is a Uniform Law Conference of Canada–recommended section. The purpose of it is to permit an arbitral tribunal to withhold an award until it has received full payment of fees and expenses, and to extend the time for giving the award until security is provided, as well as to allow a party to apply to the appointing authority — which the BCICAC is intended to be, under the regulations — for direction that the arbitral tribunal deliver the award, on payment in trust to the appointing authority, of fees and expenses.

[4:05 p.m.]

A summary determination of fees and expenses, a direction that fees and expenses be paid out of the trust moneys or a direction that any balance of moneys in trust be paid out — those would be key BCICAC functions as designated authority under the regs.

This section also permits a party to apply to the Supreme Court if the appointing authority fails to make an order within 30 days, a safeguard there if there’s an issue with the BCICAC. The BCICAC here in this section is providing an escrow function in the event that one party doesn’t wish to pay fees.

The significance of this is that when parties fail to make payment of arbitral fees and expenses, withholding an outstanding arbitral award can serve as security to ensure that payment. Most commonly, it’s one party that doesn’t want to pay its share of the arbitral tribunal fees and expenses. The party who believes it has lost the arbitration is usually the one who doesn’t want to pay. They have no interest in having the arbitral award given to the parties, because they lost.

The proposed provision provides a mechanism to secure payment of the arbitral tribunal’s fees and expenses and to allow the arbitral tribunal to release the arbitral award to the parties. It’s obviously an important function in the whole process. The proposed provision will ensure that arbitral awards are released in a timely manner and that arbitral fees and expenses are paid.

Sections 52 to 57 inclusive approved.

On section 58.

Hon. D. Eby: I have a proposed amendment to this section. This proposed amendment is meant to address what was identified as an issue of insufficient clarity about whether there needed to be a single justice of the Court of Appeal or a panel of the Court of Appeal determining leave on the set-aside of an arbitral award. It clarifies that when leave to appeal is sought, the application is to be brought before a single justice. It’s not obvious from the text in the proposed bill that that was the intention.

While the purpose of the amendment is fairly straightforward, the text that is struck out and substituted is somewhat lengthy to read out, so I’d ask members to refer to that paper copy for reference.

I’ll note for the member that this is an identical amendment proposed to section 61. I’ll be raising it for that section as well as section 59. I guess I’ll be up three times, for proposed amendments 58, 59 and 61. All of the amendments have the same intent: to just clarify that our intention was that, for leave to set aside an arbitral award, it be a single justice of the B.C. Court of Appeal rather than the court sitting in a panel.

I move the amendment to section 58 that is in the possession of the Clerk.

[SECTION 58 (6), by adding the underlined text as shown:

(6) A party may appeal a Supreme Court decision under this section to the Court of Appeal with leave of a justice of the Court of Appeal.]

Amendment approved.

Section 58 as amended approved.

[4:10 p.m.]

On section 59.

Hon. D. Eby: I move the amendment to section 59 that’s in the possession of the Clerk.

[SECTION 59, by deleting the text shown as struck out and adding the underlined text as shown:

Appeals on questions of law

59 (1) There is no appeal to a court from an arbitral award other than as provided under this section.

(2) A party to an arbitration may appeal to the Court of Appeal on any question of law arising out of an arbitral award if

(a) all the parties to the arbitration consent, or

(b) subject to subsection (3), thea justice of that court grants leave to appeal under subsection (4).

(3) A party to an arbitration may seek leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal on any question of law arising out of an arbitral award unless the arbitration agreement expressly states that the parties to the agreement may not appeal any question of law arising out of an arbitral award.

(4) On an application for leave under subsection (3), a justice of the Court of Appeal may grant leave if itthe justice determines that

(a) the importance of the result of the arbitration to the parties justifies the intervention of the court and the determination of the point of law may prevent a miscarriage of justice,

(b) the point of law is of importance to some class or body of persons of which the applicant is a member, or

(c) the point of law is of general or public importance.

(5) If a justice of the Court of Appeal grants leave to appeal under subsection (4), itthe justice may attach to the order granting leave conditions that itthe justice considers just.

(6) On an appeal to the Court of Appeal, the court may

(a) confirm, amend or set aside the arbitral award, or

(b) remit the arbitral award to the arbitrator together with the court’s opinion on the question of law that was the subject of the appeal.]

I move the amendment.

On the amendment.

Hon. D. Eby: This is an identical amendment to section 58 in that it clarifies the intent that when leave to set aside an arbitral award is sought, the application should be brought before a single justice rather than a panel.

Amendment approved.

On section 59 as amended.

M. Lee: Just on section 59 as amended. I had some questions going back to section 59 as proposed under Bill 7.

This is an area, of course, where there has been significant streamlining of the appeal provisions under this bill as compared to the existing statute. If I could ask the Attorney General to comment on what the feedback has been in the consultation process around the change to this appeal process.

Hon. D. Eby: There has been support for this amendment. The reasons are that the grounds of appeal are unchanged from the present provision; however, what is changed is the lengthy four-step review process, which could see two appearances at B.C. Supreme Court and two appearances at the B.C. Court of Appeal. It’s now streamlined to allow direct leave to appeal applications and any appeal, where leave is granted, to proceed before the B.C. Court of Appeal. So this is a significantly stream­lined process.

Further, parties can also take advantage of expanded authority under this section, which they didn’t have before, in that they can opt out of appeals altogether. Or they can use the services of the BCICAC that provides arbitration appeal panels on questions of fact, questions of mixed fact and law, and questions of law. So there are a number of options available for parties.

The bottom line is that not only is autonomy expanded, in terms of choosing whether there are no appeals or a particular court or BCICAC, but it’s significantly streamlined in the event that people do decide to go to court, avoiding four potential appearances and streamlining that to leave and then the appeal itself at the Court of Appeal.

Section 59 as amended approved.

Section 60 approved.

On section 61.

Hon. D. Eby: I move the amendment to section 61 that’s in the possession of the Clerk.

[SECTION 61 (7), by adding the underlined text as shown:

(7) A party may appeal a Supreme Court decision under this section to the Court of Appeal with leave of a justice of the Court of Appeal.]

On the amendment.

Hon. D. Eby: This is an identical amendment to the amendments in sections 58 and 59, intended to clarify that leave to appeal to set aside an arbitral award take place before a single justice rather than a panel of the Court of Appeal.

Amendment approved.

Section 61 as amended approved.

Sections 62 to 72 inclusive approved.

On section 73.

[4:15 p.m.]

M. Lee: I wanted to take this opportunity to ask the Attorney General…. In terms of the move of these provisions from this Commercial Arbitration Act to the Family Law Act — I do appreciate that ministry staff has forwarded me, through the briefings — that makes greater sense in terms of where those arbitration provisions ought to sit.

If I could ask the Attorney General: is there any impact of these amendments that the Attorney General foresees in terms of how arbitration will be used under the Family Law Act by virtue of this change?

Hon. D. Eby: I’m joined here by Darryl Hrenyk on the Family Law Act amendments and appreciate his assistance here.

To the member’s question, it’s government’s intention that the policy remain the same. There is some modernization of the language, but the intent of these amendments was to maintain the same policy and to move these sections into the Family Law Act, where a person who might be involved in a family law dispute of some kind would look, presumably, to find out what their options are rather than looking into an arbitration act, a totally different statute. We’re putting it into the Family Law Act so that it’s more intuitive for people.

M. Lee: Just to ask the question here. Are there any adjustments or revisions that are necessary under the Family Law Act to contemplate the move of these provisions to that act?

Hon. D. Eby: There are two sets of consequential amendments, one to the Family Law Act and one to the Family Maintenance Enforcement Act. For the Family Law Act, section 245 is amended to add regulation-making powers. These sections obviously came from the Arbitration Act and were brought to the Family Law Act.

[4:20 p.m.]

The Arbitration Act had certain regulation-making powers in relation to family law arbitrations that aren’t in the current act, so those regulation-making powers needed to be included in the Family Law Act.

The member didn’t ask, but anticipating his question, the Family Maintenance Enforcement Act was amended — in particular, that the definition of a maintenance award should include an arbitration award just so that it’s very clear that if there is a support award that’s made through the arbitration process, the Family Maintenance Enforcement Act officials can, in fact, enforce that, just as they could a court judgment or other type of maintenance award.

M. Lee: Thank you for that response and addressing the Family Maintenance Enforcement Act as well. I appreciate that.

Just one other question, then, relating to the reg-making powers under section 74 of this bill. We are not actually on that section. But given that it’s related, just in view of the Attorney General’s response, can I ask: are there any particular regulations in the area of arbitration for family law disputes that are contemplated at this time that the government would be looking to make?

Hon. D. Eby: I’m advised that staff haven’t identified any yet.

Sections 73 to 82 inclusive approved.

Title approved.

Hon. D. Eby: I move the committee rise and report the bill complete with amendments.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 4:23 p.m.

[4:25 p.m.]

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Reporting of Bills

BILL 7 — ARBITRATION ACT

Bill 7, Arbitration Act, reported complete with amendments.

Mr. Speaker: When shall the bill be considered as reported?

Hon. D. Eby: With leave, now.

Leave granted.

Mr. Speaker: When shall the bill be read a third time?

Hon. D. Eby: Now.

Mr. Speaker: The question is third reading of Bill 10.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: It is an act, Bill 7, Arbitration Act.

Third Reading of Bills

BILL 7 — ARBITRATION ACT

Bill 7, Arbitration Act, read a third time and passed.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call throne speech debate.

Throne Speech Debate

(continued)

T. Shypitka: It gives me great privilege to speak to this fifth session in the 41st parliament and my response to the throne speech, going back to the throne speech.

I just want to say a quick congratulations to my Auntie Anne and Uncle Steve, who just had their 60th wedding anniversary not too long ago. So hats off to them. My mom and my dad are watching right now. They obviously don’t have much of a life.

Interjection.

T. Shypitka: Yeah, they probably are watching the Brier right now. You’re probably right there.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

But just to speak to the throne speech. I just want to highlight a few things here in this speech. This is the fourth throne speech that we’ve heard from the government. Actually, it kind of floored me a little bit. It doesn’t seem like it’s been four throne speeches, but it has been four. I think I alluded, the last time I was here, that this would be a time of reflection, you would think — for a government to say: “You know, after four throne speeches, we’ll be able to realize the fruits of our labour now and see all the plans that we said we were going to put in. Now we’re going to see all the good things that have come from it.”

We really just haven’t, and I’m going to explain why. I’ll explain a little bit about the promises that were made and the promises that were never kept. I think when we go back to the election in 2017, we all heard a few themes on what the NDP was going to do. We heard that through their throne speeches. A big one was on affordability. That was the big promise that they were going to make. I’ll break down some of those components of what affordability meant to this government and what we haven’t realized as a province.

I’ll go to a statistic first, right off the bat. According to Demographia International Housing, Vancouver is the second-most unaffordable housing market in the world now. It has crept up the ranks. It’s not a list you want to be on the top of, and we’re No. 2 right now.

There’s a large reason for that. Since being in government, the NDP have introduced…. Well, it was 19 new or increased taxes. We’ve now seen that creep up to 23, and I’ll explain those other four here a little bit later.

[4:30 p.m.]

These taxes made up about $5.7 billion per year since the last government was in place. But with this budget that we’ve seen since the throne speech, we’ve seen now that it’s going to go up to about $8.8 billion by 2022. So what does that mean to the average person on the street? Well, what it means is that it’s going to add about $2,400 per year per family, making life not affordable for British Columbians.

You hear a lot about government celebrating the elimination of the MSP. They claim it’s the largest tax cut in B.C. history — and we’ll get some applause over there, I’m sure — but let’s just really look at what a tax cut is. A tax cut to government is taking away a tax, taking away revenue by means of taking away a tax, and giving the benefit back to British Columbians as less tax. But what has happened is they replaced the MSP with the employer health tax, which is actually a bigger tax burden to British Columbians. So it wasn’t a tax cut. It was a replacement of a tax.

This tax has affected municipalities, not-for-profit organ­izations, health services and police and fire services. The chamber of commerce has been very adamant about how this has impacted small and medium-sized businesses across the province. Business owners, especially in the hospitality industry, have been really damaged by this tax. To say that it was a tax cut really is very misrepresentative, in my opinion.

Despite the efforts to claw back spending, government expenses are still over budget by about $550 million. These are big numbers that people should be concerned with. There’s over one billion in infrastructure projects promised in 2019. They’re all on hold now. That came out in the Q2 highlights last year. Spending with this government is up about $11.4 billion per year since the last government was in place. So even though it seems like a catch phrase, we truly do have a tax-and-spend government.

One of the other big promises that we heard in throne speech after throne speech and right from the election time was on the 114,000 affordable homes throughout the province. It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure it out. It’s about 11,400 a year, on average. Over the last three fiscal years, we should have around 35,000 built already. But we’ve got about 2,400 right now to show for it. I’m not condemning those 2,400 homes, by any means, but I need to shed a light on yet another broken promise that we’re seeing. It’s becoming a bit of a theme here.

To address the housing crisis, our party has always said to increase the supply through a free enterprise system, provide some incentives to move the market in a positive direction. But what we’ve seen is just the opposite with this government. The MLA advisory 2019 Year in Review states: “Many larger-scale developments took a pause​…​with less than 4,000 concrete presale units released in 2019, compared to over 12,000 in 2018.” This is a decrease in concrete presale inventory by 75 percent. That’s quite substantial. So our supply is going down. Our demand is increasing. We have 70,000 new people come to the province. Therefore, we’re seeing the prices of homes going up again.

Housing starts were down 40 percent last month. In greater Vancouver and even in my riding of Kootenay East, prices are going up. Strata councils, as we’ve heard through many debates in the House here, are in crisis mode as they watch their insurance premiums skyrocket, in some cases up by 400 percent. This is not according to us; this is according to the insurance brokers of B.C. So affordability is not what we’re seeing here.

Then, speaking of housing, another promise that we heard was the renters rebate. It was a $400 renter rebate that was promised, and in this budget that we’ve seen, it’s not there. That’s something we heard in the throne speech many times.

The other one, the other big promise, was the $10-a-day daycare. This was a big deal right across the province when this promise was made. I told the story once before. I got in a pretty heated argument with a constituent. He thought that B.C. Liberals were standing in the way of $10-a-day daycare. It was pretty heated and pretty emotional.

[4:35 p.m.]

I told him, back in the election, that I don’t know where it was costed. In the election campaign, $10-a-day daycare and 114,000 affordable homes were never costed in their plan. But they threw it out there anyways. It was a good little tidbit for people to grab on to. Now we’re seeing after four throne speeches that we’re not seeing any real breakthrough on providing $10-a-day daycare.

I would say there are only 2,500 $10-a-day daycare spaces in the province, which represents about 2 percent of the total space. I think the total space is about 114,000. There are only 25 that have $10-a-day daycare, and that’s a pilot project that ends at the end of March.

I’m sure that they’ll try to pick up the slack and keep it going. But none of these are new spaces. They were all operating before. They said they’d funded 10,400, but later admitted that there’s only…. Sorry, this is on daycare spaces. They said they had funded 10,400, but later — now — they’ve admitted that only 2,055 are actually open and working.

After nearly two years of trying, it remains to be seen when or if the others will actually open. So far, they’ve just outright failed and led people down the garden path. I’ve heard some comments about some people that were lucky enough to get the $10-a-day daycare. In their own words, they said it was like winning a lottery. I have to agree. You know, when only 2 percent of the daycare spaces are $10-a-day daycare, it’s 2 percent win and 98 percent fail. So I agree that it would be like winning a lottery.

When you’re in a jurisdiction or a riding where one person on the street has got $10-a-day daycare and the person next to them has not, it seems like there are winners and losers. It’s not really even for everybody.

The softwood lumber industry was another big deal. I know that, then, the Premier — he was the MLA for Langford–Juan de Fuca — came to my riding and said that he was going to be the champion for softwood lumber. He was going to make it all go away and be a champion for the forest industry.

Well, we all know what has happened since then: 6,000 families out of work, the longest labour dispute in forestry history has happened, 100 curtailments, ten permanent and indefinite shutdowns just in 2019 alone. People have lost their homes. They’ve lost their equipment. Some of them haven’t worked for eight or nine months. That’s got to take a significant toll on people. Once again, another real fail on this government’s part.

I’ll go into mining a little bit. That’s my critic role. The competitiveness of the B.C. mining sector is deteriorating real fast. It’s due largely to costs and regulatory complexity. The survey of mining companies…. The Fraser Institute’s annual survey came out here just a week or so ago, and it doesn’t paint a very good picture. For the first time in over ten years, there’s no Canadian jurisdiction, actually — not just British Columbia, but no Canadian jurisdiction — in the top ten. We have fallen from…. As this little chart says, we’ve gone from first place to third place real quick. Europe is now in first and Australia is in second place.

But if we look at B.C., in particular, at some of these tables I’ve got here…. The investment attractiveness index is an index that the Fraser Institute uses to grade investment attractiveness throughout the world. British Columbia is not doing very well. Where are they here? We are in 19th out of 76 jurisdictions, where in 2015, we were 18 out of 109 jurisdictions. So we’ve fallen from, if I do quick math here, probably about the 14th percentile to about the 46 percentile, dropping rapidly.

There’s also another index they’ve got. It’s called the policy perception index. The policy perception index “provides a comprehensive assessment of the attractiveness of mining policies in a jurisdiction and can serve as a report card to governments on how attractive their policies are from the point of view of an exploration manager.”

[4:40 p.m.]

This one is really troubling. We can see the chart here. We go from No. 1 all the way down to the bottom of the chart. We are just ahead of Río Negro, which I guess is encouraging, but we’re behind Tasmania, Turkey, Bulgaria. Alberta is up there. Their policy seems to be doing pretty good, but in B.C., our policy is not looked upon as being very favourable.

This is trouble. This a very big concern, because the government, in their throne speech, said that they were going to be champions and bring great opportunities to British Columbians. Mining is one of our foundational sectors of our province, one of our main places that we get employment and all of the good things that come with it. We’re seeing it slip big-time.

I dare say that this also was reflected with oil and gas, LNG, with our policy. It’s not looked upon as very favourable. We heard about the Frontier project in Alberta that was shelved. I mean, there are lots of ways you can read into that. But when you have something that’s federally approved on some other issues like Trans Mountain — federally and provincially approved, gone through all of the recommendations, all the work, all the money — and you still can’t get it going, there’s a risk to that. Investors see that, and they walk away.

We’re seeing a severe shriveling of our investment. There’s no question about it.

There was a statistic. I was at Mining Day here last week, and there was something said at the mining reception. We have 17 large operating mines in the province right now. They’re all coming to the end of their life in the next 20 years. If we don’t put any new mines in…. This government has not yet put any new mines into production since they’ve taken office. In the next five years, if we don’t see anything new, we’re going to be down to five mines in the next 20 years.

That’s a major concern. That’s a major revenue generator for this province, providing highly skilled jobs but also providing opportunities for not only rural areas but urban areas as well. I ask people all the time: “Where do you think the largest mining community in B.C. is?” Some will say: “Tumbler Ridge? Sparwood? Prince George? I don’t know.” But it’s Vancouver.

Vancouver is the largest mining community in B.C. It homes more than 1,300 offices. They’ve got legal, every­thing that goes along with it, engineering. You could walk downtown Vancouver, and all those office towers are full of mining companies — junior miners, big miners. The list is endless. If we lose that, we’re in big trouble.

But while I’m talking about the mining industry, I just wanted to give a little hats-off to some of the folks in the mining industry: AME president Kendra Johnston, a great gal who’s doing a hell of a job, ’Lyn Anglin, Rob Stevens — they’re all from AME; Michael Goehring, the new president and CEO who just came in last year, with MABC, along with the vice-president Lindsay Kislock; and Geoscience president Gavin Dirom, along with Carlos Salas, Christa Pellett and Richard Truman.

These are people I see all the time at different conventions and conferences. They’re doing their best to drive mining to where it should be. We want to go to a low-carbon economy. I don’t know why we don’t embrace the mining industry more. We should give it more of a high five. We do it better than anybody else in the world — the best environmental standards, the best health and safety standards of anywhere else. Yet there are a lot of those that would like to see it gone.

I’ve heard even in the House here where some members here think it’s an old economy, that it’s like a sunset industry that should be gone soon. But if we are going to move to a low-carbon economy, if we want to move to turbines, wind power, alternative energy, solar power and geothermal, all that requires minerals and metals. There’s no other way you can do it. If you don’t farm it, then you’ve got to mine it. They’re the only two things that you can do.

[4:45 p.m.]

If we cut our hands off here and give that demand to other countries, such as Turkey or these other ones that we see — Venezuela, Saudi Arabia — then we are adhering to those lower standards that they have there on human rights and environmental standards and safety standards. You can go to the Congo, and you’ll be mining lithium or other precious metals, and they’ve got 14-year-old children that go down these rabbit hole mine shafts with no ventilation, no nothing. Those are their standards.

I ask the question: is that where people want to chase demand to? I would think not. We’ve got to embrace our mining industry a little bit better, and this throne speech really ignores it. The budget ignores it. We’ve seen cuts in Energy and Mines. They’ve got a cut this year. I think 15 or 20 have been cut this year.

What else was I going to say here? I guess when the budget was tabled, they came up with a surplus, something that we never thought would come in, but it did. They were able to balance the budget by four new taxes. I mentioned that earlier. There were 19, and now there are 23.

There’s a vaping tax. I think it’s 20 percent on vaping products. Netflix and live-streaming tax. There’s a sugary drink tax, carbonated and sugary-type drinks in vending machines, which could even be non-sugared drinks. It could be Diet Cokes, or it could be waters. Then, of course, there was a tax on the $220,000-and-up group that some people on the other side refer to as the top 1 percent, which almost criminalized them for making that much money. But there was a tax that went from 16.8 percent to 20.5 percent.

I just wanted to talk a little bit about the vaping tax and….

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Member.

T. Shypitka: Okay. Sorry. I’m done.

B. Ma: It is my pleasure to be able to rise today to speak on the throne speech. It is the 2020 throne speech. I’m trying to figure out…. I think this is my third throne speech. Is that correct? Third, fourth, fifth? I guess that it depends how you count it.

Interjections.

B. Ma: Yes, that’s right. There was the clone speech.

I’m being very distracted right now by all the commentary around, but it’s all valuable commentary. Thank you very much to all my colleagues.

I’m very grateful to be able to stand today to speak in favour of the throne speech. Once again, I need to start by thanking all of the people in my life who have supported me through my work as an MLA and beyond, really — all the people who helped me become elected, in particular the voters of North Vancouver–Lonsdale.

I also want to thank, once more, the incredible work of the Premier and the Minister of Finance and the entire cabinet team who have worked very closely together with our caucus in order to produce this throne speech and produce yet another balanced budget — an incredible job done by the Minister of Finance.

My riding of North Vancouver–Lonsdale and, indeed, the entire North Shore, has benefited greatly from the work of this government over the last 2½ years. I guess we’re getting closer to three years, but not quite — about 30 months into our government’s work. A lot of the work that I set out to do when I first decided to run has actually been accomplished. I mean, there’s, of course, still much more work to do, but I’ve been very grateful for the progress that’s been made so far.

Top issues in my riding continue to be transportation, housing affordability, child care and the environment, and certainly health care as well. I’m going to touch a little bit on the work that we’ve been doing in those areas and how the North Shore has benefited, because it also gives an indication as to how the new throne speech will continue this work forward for the rest of the province.

On transportation. Every single day — and unfortunately, it isn’t an easy issue to fix — the issue of traffic and congestion continues to impact people throughout the North Shore. It’s not a new issue. It has been growing for many, many years now. Now, in 2017, when I was elected, I started working on a project that I believed would be very important for the North Shore. It was a project that ultimately ended up being called the integrated North Shore transportation planning project, also known as INSTPP.

[4:50 p.m.]

I went to all the mayors on the North Shore. At the time, it was Mayor Mike Smith of the district of West Vancouver. There was Mayor Richard Walton of the district of North Vancouver and Mayor Darrell Mussatto of the city of North Vancouver. I went to them with this idea that all levels of government should come together and come up with a plan for traffic and transportation on the North Shore.

Surprisingly, it never had been done before. To be honest, I did receive…. There was a little bit of skepticism, I think, from the people that I approached early on. Nevertheless, they were very supportive of my efforts and agreed to participate in INSTPP.

I also need to thank very much one of the vice-presidents of TransLink, Geoff Cross. TransLink, through Geoff Cross, was one of the earliest adopters of this idea that we should be able to get all levels of government together to work on the issue of transportation. With the help of TransLink, we were able to launch this project. I honestly believe that we wouldn’t have been able to do it if TransLink hadn’t been an early adopter, hadn’t set the stage to help us move forward on this.

So we all came together — provincial government, TransLink, city of North Vancouver, district of North Vancouver, district of West Vancouver, Squamish Nation, Tsleil-Waututh Nation, the port authority and federal MPs as well — in order to study…. Well, the politicians didn’t quite do the studies, but our staff, with the help of engineers, with the help of planners, studied the root causes of the traffic congestion on the North Shore and, from there, managed to debunk a lot of myths about what the North Shore believes causes traffic congestion. From there, they were able to use data and evidence, scientific modelling, to come up with a suite of recommendations to actually move the dial forward on improving mobility on the North Shore.

One of the major issues that we determined…. One of the major root causes of transportation on the North Shore that was determined through the INSTPP process was housing affordability, interestingly enough. People who work on the North Shore can’t afford to live on the North Shore, and people who live on the North Shore need jobs that pay enough for them to be able to afford to live on the North Shore. Oftentimes that means they actually have to leave the region to go to their jobs.

For lack of a better term, what I’m describing is that the North Shore both exports and imports workers. We export a lot of talent and a lot of labour over the two fixed-link bridges and across the SeaBus every single day — tens of thousands of people travelling off the North Shore in order to get to their jobs. At the same time, we import workers from all over the region. We import them from Burnaby and Vancouver and Tri-Cities, Langley and even in the other direction, down from Squamish — all the way in from really far distances.

We import workers to fill the jobs that aren’t being filled more locally. As an example, we have a lot of teachers that come in from very far distances. We have firefighters and emergency responders that come in from very far distances. Nurses. Doctors. I don’t know about doctors in particular, but nurses, certainly.

I remember that in 2016 when there was a big snow­storm down in Metro Vancouver, the bridges were impacted so greatly. To be fair, in Metro Vancouver, it doesn’t take that much snow to impact traffic really terribly. But it was enough to shut down the bridges. I can’t remember exactly how long they were shut down for, but it was quite substantial.

It was long enough that Lions Gate Hospital actually had to invoke a clause in the nurses’ union contract that is very, very rarely, if ever, invoked. Basically, it’s an emergency provision that requires that all nurses come back to work, even if they just got off the shift, even if they were never scheduled. If they were on call, of course, they would come back. The reason why they needed to do this was because so many of their nurses could not get across the bridge to go to the North Shore to go in to their shifts at Lions Gate Hospital. The entire hospital was dangerously understaffed. So that gives you an idea of how much commuting happens.

[4:55 p.m.]

At the same time, we have a lot of work, for instance, in places like West Vancouver. West Vancouver is one of the few municipalities in Metro Vancouver where the population is actually dropping, yet nobody you ask will tell you that traffic is getting better in West Vancouver.

What that really indicated was that there’s a complex relationship between traffic congestion and population. Oftentimes people think: “Well, if we develop too much, if we build too much housing, too many people will come over to the North Shore and live there, and then traffic will get worse.”

But what we actually see is that even if the population drops, traffic still gets worse, because in West Vancouver, as the population ages and people need more help in order to live in their homes, we’re still importing workers in order to clean houses, to work in the coffee shops, to teach at schools, to fill emergency response roles.

In fact, the district of West Vancouver’s own staff…. I believe that around 90 percent of the district of West Vancouver’s employees do not live in West Vancouver. They’re all coming in as well. An incredible amount of traffic is produced, I guess, from not having complete communities where people live close to where they work, play, study, shop, and so forth.

INSTPP really focused on, really dug into, that particular issue. That’s why the work that our government is doing around housing and housing affordability is actually very much related to the work we need to do to improve traffic and congestion out of the North Shore.

The INSTPP report produced a number of recommendations. There were 14 top-line recommendations but also an entire appendix full of recommendations. One of the recommendations was to study a rapid transit connection between the city of North Vancouver’s city centre and downtown Vancouver.

Following that recommendation, the provincial government, our government, partnered with the three local municipalities — the city of North Vancouver, the district of North Vancouver, the district of West Vancouver and the city of Vancouver, so four local governments — and TransLink to undergo what is now the first-ever technical feasibility study into a Burrard Inlet rapid transit solution.

We just provided an update earlier this week. It’s very exciting. The work is being done in two stages, and stage 1 is now complete. What stage 1 did was that it produced a shortlist — some people call it a medium list — of options that we believe are workable, at least according to the first stage of screening.

The kinds of factors that we took a look at were topography of the land, geotechnical conditions at Burrard Inlet and the surrounding area, structural engineering requirements, as well as ridership potential — the ability to improve travel times for people who are travelling by transit or travelling by car — and alignment with local government land use plans. These aren’t just lines on a map. They’re actually potential solutions that have risen to the top out of a brainstorm of many, many different solutions.

I’ve heard lots of ideas come from my community. At least one community member suggested a trebuchet that would launch people from one side of the water over to the other. A community member also suggested air tubes that would shoot people through the water, and they would pop up on the other side. These are all fantastic, creative ideas but, unfortunately, did not rise to the top when we started to screen for technical feasibility, safety factors and some of the other factors that are required for a rapid transit solution to be successful.

Interjection.

B. Ma: Yes, as one of my colleagues just said, survival of your travellers is also very important.

So unfortunately, those ideas didn’t quite…. It wasn’t quite the cream that rose to the top, but I really am very grateful for those ideas. I think creativity is good, especially when, maybe, the topic of transportation can sometimes be talked about in quite a tired way.

[5:00 p.m.]

We also have another study going on that I think vehicle users will be very interested in. That is the Upper Levels Highway corridor study. We’re actually taking a look at Highway 1 between the Second Narrows Bridge all the way over to Horseshoe Bay, taking a look at the entire corridor to find out where improvements need to be and taking a look at the long-term forecasts for traffic volumes and developments. For instance, the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal is expected to expand. How will that impact the use of Highway 1? We’re actually taking a look at the long-term needs of Highway 1 and then taking a look at the existing conditions and figuring out a plan, an implementation plan, for improvements over the next many years.

But let me be clear as well that improvements of public transit and rapid transit do help drivers as well, because if we can provide people with options for moving around, then even though not everybody can leave their car at home every single day and take the bus, if we can give people the options to take the bus, then that actually leaves more room on the roads for drivers.

There are lots of great things that are happening around transportation. All of that was supported through work by this government and, in particular, the work of the Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure. I know that she values public transit very much. She values the work that we are collectively doing on the North Shore — all levels of government working together. I’m grateful that she has been so supportive of helping us move these studies along and helping us implement a lot of real improvements right now as well.

As an example, another major set of improvements that we’ve managed to make over the last year was to improve incident clearing on the bridges. The Second Narrows Bridge and the Lions Gate Bridge. They…. Well, they’re very well used. There are about 200,000 trips every single day that cross those two bridges together — about 130,000 trips per day on the Second Narrows Bridge and about, I think, 60,000 to 70,000 trips per day over the Lions Gate Bridge.

Generally speaking, the volumes can be handled until there’s an incident, either on the bridge or somewhere else along the highway or on the off-ramps and on-ramps. As soon as there’s an incident that happens, as a driver and as a commuter, you can’t plan for that, because your 45-minute trip suddenly becomes two or 2½ hours long. It creates incredible frustration for people. What’s worse about incidents that happen on the roadways is that a stall that lasts for five minutes can actually impact traffic for far longer than five minutes.

There was an incident several months ago where the entire North Shore was just locked up, end to end, red everywhere. If you looked at Google Maps, it was just red everywhere. What had happened was a cement truck overturned. It was hours and hours. I think it lasted almost eight hours.

There are definitely going to be incidents that you can’t really plan for. It would be unreasonable for a municipality to plan for the ability to clean up a cement truck super, super quickly, within 30 minutes or so.

What we can do is prepare for incidents that can be anticipated or that are more regular. Stalls are very regular. People running out of gas on the bridges. Unfortunately, it happens. Fender-benders, collisions between vehicles, even commercial trucks, if there are collisions and so forth…. A cement truck is a little bit out there, because I think it just kind of went all over the place.

Most of the time, we’re dealing with some incidents involving vehicles that we are now able to clear quickly. About a year ago — a year and a few months ago — our government actually signed a new maintenance contract that improved towing capacity on those two bridges and improved the types of vehicles that we were able to handle in short order. Right now there are several tow trucks and flatbeds and heavy wreckers on standby all the time at these two bridges.

[5:05 p.m.]

We’ve been able to improve incident clearing by a substantial amount. That’s really important, because, like I said earlier, if it takes 30 minutes to clear an accident, it can actually impact traffic for many, many hours afterwards. The faster we can clear those incidents, the better off commuters are.

We also have to really work on reducing incidents to begin with. For that, I do have to acknowledge the work of members from the other side. Under their government, they had started the Lower Lynn Valley highway interchange project upgrades. That work is still happening right now. Now, it probably won’t fix congestion long term, but it will make the interchange much safer. So I’m glad that our government, through the Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure, is continuing to fund that project. But it certainly was started under the previous government.

What the previous government didn’t do, of course, though, was really focus on public transit. That’s what I’m really grateful to our government for doing, to really focus on public transit, rapid transit solutions, as a way forward out of urban congestion. We can’t keep building more lanes, more roads, more highways when we are limited by the amount of land that we have to use there.

We have to be able to embrace different modes of mobility, different modes of transportation, and a lot of that work is happening now more quickly than ever before. I’m proud of our government’s investment into phase 2 of the TransLink mayors plan. Together with the federal government and local governments, it’s a $7.3 billion investment into public transit just in the Metro Vancouver area. It is the largest investment into public transit in B.C. history.

I’m just doing a time check right now, and I think that we are making good time here. I want to move on, then, to talk a little bit more about…. Actually, I’m going to skip housing for now because I actually want to talk about child care.

Child care is an issue that the Minister of State for Child Care has been working so incredibly hard on. When I think about where this issue started and how far she’s taken the file in just 2½ years, I am so astounded, so impressed. In just 2½ years, we’ve gone from families needing to be prepared to pay $1,900 per month per child for licensed child care to over 20,000 families having access to $10-a-day child care or less.

That is through a number of programs. Of course, there’s the $10-a-day child care pilot project. There’s one in my riding, so I’m really grateful for that one. That’s not an income-tested program. You are able to get access to $10-a-day or less child care if you are one of the families that sends their children to the facility Novaco, being run by North Shore Neighbourhood House.

But there are also the other programs that are helping to improve affordability for parents. There’s the up to $350 per month per child reduction in fees under the child care fee reduction program. That’s not income-tested either. That’s based on the agreement that the provider has with government.

Then there’s the third program, which is the affordable child care benefit. That benefit is worth, if I remember correctly, I believe, up to $1,250 per month per child, based on income. That means that if you are a family that makes less than $45,000 per year, you can actually access licensed child care for free. The child care fee reduction program plus the affordable child care benefit equals…. It pretty much adds up to $1,600 per month per child, which can allow some families to actually send their children to licensed child care for free.

But the affordable child care benefit is still beneficial to your family all the way up to families making $111,000 per year. So it’s quite a ride range of incomes that is positively impacted by an income-tested program. A lot of the times when people think about income-tested programs, they think that if they make more than $40,000 or $50,000 a year, then they’re probably not going to benefit. But this actually has a really wide range of incomes that are benefited.

I believe the median household income in B.C. is just under $80,000, so this covers more than most families — if they have children, of course.

[5:10 p.m.]

Having said that, $111,000 per year in a family income is not the top end of families that need help with child care costs. Even families making a collective income of $200,000 a year will find that child care is very, very expensive. That’s why there’s still more work to do on child care here in B.C., more work to move it towards a universal child care program.

I’m also pleased to see that the throne speech really doubles down on our commitment to child care, licensed child care. In fact, it literally doubles the budget from $1 billion to $2 billion — a huge investment, and I think very worthwhile as well. We have many families where one parent, usually at least one, which makes it very challenging, by the way, for families led by single parents…. We have many families in B.C. where parents will choose to stay at home rather than to go back to work, even though they want to go back to work, simply because they can’t afford the child care and simply because it would be more expensive for them to work than it would be for them to stay at home.

That’s no longer the case for so many families. Tens and tens of thousands of families that are benefiting from these child care fee reduction programs are now not having to make the choice between going to work and knowing that their child is safe. That’s a really important thing.

The throne speech also emphasizes that there’s more work to be done. That’s good, because a lot of parents are very grateful for the work we’ve done, but they also don’t hesitate to remind me that there is more to do. In particular, I hear from a lot of parents about the need for before- and after-school care.

The need for child care isn’t limited to those children who are under five years old. Even when children are between five years old and 12 years old, though they can go to school and their parents know they are safe between about 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., the parents still need to figure out what to do about their child’s care in the hour before school starts and the few hours after school. So before- and after-school care are critically important for families.

Many community members in my community of North Vancouver–Lonsdale have approached me about this topic, not so much about the affordability of it, but about the availability of it. Many of the elementary schools in my riding do have before- and after-school care provided for by third-party providers. But the agreements are often…. The relationship between school districts and these third-party providers is really a landlord-tenant-based relationship. They’re not treated like services that families need. They’re not treated as services, necessarily, that are equal to the public education system. But they’re still critically important.

I’m really pleased that the Minister of Education has tabled Bill 8. I was able to speak to it a little bit earlier today. Bill 8, among many things, basically expands the mandate, if you can call it that, of the public education system to include the provision of before- and after-school child care. I actually don’t think that it’s even limited to before- and after-school child care. It may include zero-to-five child care as well.

That’s really important, because it gives school districts certainty and school trustees certainty that this is something that they can do, and it is something that we want them to do. We want them to provide child care on site at these schools. We want them to have a plan in place. We want them to support families. We enable them, even, to run their own child cares. Bill 8 actually allows for school districts to operate their own child care programs in addition to working in partnership with third-party providers.

[5:15 p.m.]

When I think of families that need child care support, I think of a family who told me about their arrangement for before- and after-school care. They have one parent drop their child off at their before-school care, which is at a different site from their elementary school, and then they have a grandparent pick up the child from the before-school care and drop them off at their elementary school. Then they arrange for the different set of grandparents to pick up the kids from their elementary school and drop them off at their after-school care, which is at a different site. Then another parent goes and picks them up at the end of the day.

It is a huge amount of work, a huge amount of stress. Also, it adds a lot of extra traffic on our roads as well. So in addition to being an excellent social policy and excellent for our economy, because we can get people back into the workforce who want to be a part of the workforce, good strong child care policy is actually also good transportation policy too. If we can reduce the amount of trips that families need to make in order to keep their children safe throughout the day, we actually reduce traffic on the roads.

I see that my time is coming to a close. I’d just like to say once more that I’m very grateful to be a part of this government. I wish I could talk about some of the work the Minister of Health has been doing, because that’s been an incredible boon to our community, with the urgent and primary care centre. But the green light is on, and that makes me a bit nervous that I’m going to be suddenly cut off.

I will take my seat now and simply say that I support the throne speech very, very much.

Deputy Speaker: Minister of Health.

Hon. A. Dix: It’s good to speak in support of this extraordinary throne speech.

Interjections.

Hon. A. Dix: Oh, I’m sorry.

Deputy Speaker: I didn’t get an indication.

Hon. A. Dix: I apologize. I thought no one had got up, and I apologize to my colleague from Vancouver. I was just making sure that things were good.

S. Sullivan: I was trying to stand up. I was unsuccessful, so sorry about that. I’ll work on that.

First of all, it’s a great pleasure for me to speak and, especially, to be the representative of the riding of Vancouver–False Creek. It’s a real blessing for me, because I, almost 30 years ago, became a city councillor in Vancouver, and one of the main tasks that we had over those years was to plan for and rezone the neighbourhood that I live in right now — Yaletown and, well, Coal Harbour and International Village and downtown south. So the whole downtown area I watched in front of my eyes just completely transform into this amazing urban space with high-quality living.

Vancouver is quite unusual in North America for having such a high-density population that actually lives in the downtown. I used to go, right on my street, right near where my current place of living is, and get a lot of work done at the printer, Benwell Atkins. I would have never thought that that industrial area would transform into this high-quality urban living space.

It’s been a pleasure for me to take a role, play a role, in actually reforming the whole area and being part of the governance that has rezoned that place. Over the years, even as mayor, I was able to do a lot of the work on the Olympic village to create that gem of a neighbourhood, and also to plan for the Olympics itself.

I think about the wonderful, transformative experience that was for the city. I think about the live sites and how we were able to make so many of those experiences available for free. I do recall that that was a six to five vote. There were a lot of people on the council that were hostile to the Olympics or indifferent, so it was a real pleasure.

[5:20 p.m.]

I must make a comment about a colleague of mine named Rich Coleman, who was the Minister of Housing at the time. We were very concerned about the lack of affordable housing, especially for vulnerable populations. We looked through our inventory and found 14 city-owned sites. We went to Minister Coleman at the time and asked him if he would build these 14 sites up for social housing, and in return, we would give tax-free, for property tax, for 60 years.

He did. He took that on, and he was able to build that housing. So we have been able to see that. About four of those are within four blocks of my home, and it’s a pleasure for me to see people have that very, very important housing.

One of the things that I was concerned about when I was mayor was that there were a number of low-income SRO, single-room-occupancy, housing buildings that were being purchased by a numbered company. And we were all worried that that was going to be some developer that was going to buy them all up and convert them. It turned out to be Minister Coleman using a numbered company and purchasing, I believe it was, over 15 of these buildings. He upgraded them and made it possible for many people to get some affordable housing.

My riding of Vancouver–False Creek is quite an amazing place. There are about a thousand mining companies. I love to tell my rural colleagues that my riding is the biggest mining riding and resource riding in the province, with hundreds and hundreds of mining companies based in the downtown highrises in my riding.

I was once invited to speak to a mining association in Colombia. I couldn’t figure out why they would want me to speak to them. They said: “When we look at the mining companies in Colombia, a great majority of them are based in Vancouver.” So Vancouver has a very large footprint around the world for mining.

We’re also a riding that is very…. It’s booming with technology companies. I note that Amazon will be moving in soon. Actually, they’ve already got quite a footprint in Vancouver. Some talk about 3,000, and some talk about 9,000 people — high-paid people that will be, you know, taking their place in the downtown of Vancouver.

It does concern me a lot that when you drop that many people into one space, we need to be prepared with housing. It’s a great anxiety for me that the city of Vancouver has…. It seems to be quite a strict regimen around that. Several proposals for housing have actually just discontinued their work and sold and are leaving downtown Vancouver at the very moment when we desperately need more supply.

One of the pleasures of my riding is the good schools that we have. But they’re so good, in fact, that they are oversubscribed, and there are wait-lists. Almost all of the wait-listed schools are in the downtown or right near the downtown. One of the challenges that we have that we desperately need is the Olympic Village school.

[5:25 p.m.]

I would like to acknowledge the Minister of Education, who did make an effort to offer an opportunity for the Vancouver school board. The issue is that there is a Queen Elizabeth Annex that is seismically unsafe. There was a proposal to take that school and have the federal government totally renovate it and upgrade it so it could be used for the French school system, and there would be 50 students that would be impacted by that.

[S. Gibson in the chair.]

Unfortunately, the school board chose not to allow that to happen, and therefore, we are in a bind. We have many students where the parents will drive them now out of the neighbourhood, drive back home and then walk to work. These are parents that have embraced the new urban life — love the fact that they can walk to their work and the facilities around. I mean, right beside my home, we have four high-quality supermarkets and dozens of the most remarkable, wonderful restaurants in the province. It’s such a walkable area.

Now, one of the schools that I was very honoured to open not too long ago is Crosstown School. It was also a school that I was involved in the rezoning of, and it was a very complicated rezoning because there were so many diverse agendas and issues to think about. That school is now a raving success. However, it is way over capacity because we have so many parents that want to get in there.

Recently there was quite a media story about the planner that I, my government, as mayor, had hired — Brent Toderian, a chief planner. He moved in next door to the school so he could live this urban life, and now he’s been told that his child is not able to go to that school because it is oversubscribed. It is a challenge right now. We need more schools, more school spaces.

Crosstown has another problem, which is another challenge of my riding, which is illegal drugs. The Crosstown School is literally blocks away from the Downtown Eastside and the sort of ground zero of some of the challenges of that neighbourhood. It definitely spills over into Crosstown, and many of the parents are distraught and concerned and worried about their children because there are needles that show up on playgrounds and real challenges of behaviour.

This is an issue that even 30 years ago on city council I was trying to grapple with. When I got there in the 1990s, I spoke with a former councillor who had dealt with this in the 1950s. He explained to me that in the 1950s, the drug problem in the Downtown Eastside was so bad that the Canadian government initiated a royal commission. This was really focused around Vancouver’s drug problem. It was very demoralising to think that this problem was so critical in the 1950s.

[5:30 p.m.]

There was this group, the United Way — actually, they used to call it the Community Chest — that had said: “We don’t want to have addicted people who are desperate for money walking around.” They said that they should use the British system, where they prescribe a mild form of the addictive substance so that the people would no longer have to steal and do all sorts of antisocial behaviours. That became a big argument in the 1950s, whether we should actually support some of these addicted people that way.

When I was a city councillor, we developed a thing called harm reduction. I worked hard to find some funding. That took actually $14 million to do a research project, in the Crosstown Clinic, called SALOME, where they would provide low-dose substitution. We had 163 people that ended up on that program.

Recently I went by that Crosstown Clinic, and I said: “You know, well, with all of this terrible disaster, the catastrophe of the opioid problem, how many people do you now have in the Crosstown Clinic? It was 163 over a dozen years ago.” They said: “Oh, today it’s 163.”

Wow. It’s remarkable that not one of those people…. Even though they are the worst addicts or the most severe cases, none of them have passed away through opioid overdose, and all of them are housed, 100 percent. There is zero homelessness and very little involvement with the prison system, the police system or the health system. It’s unfortunate that we have not been able to expand that.

On housing. Housing is one of the real challenges that I am focused on. I know that there are certain people who believe that our high housing prices are caused by fentanyl pushing, casino gambling, money laundering, people from Asia. I know that sounds like a bit of a caricature, but that actually seems to be a sentiment that is behind policy even.

Fortunately, the government did commission some studies on this. One of the first studies on casino money laundering showed that $100 million had been laundered through the casinos over ten years. Now, when I think about that, it sounds like a lot. But $10 million would buy one starter mansion per year. Even if there was 100 times that much, it would not even move the dial on house prices. So that was challenging to think that there was…. It couldn’t possibly be casino gambling that would be affecting house prices.

Then, fortunately, the government did another study on money laundering, and they had some interesting conclusions. One, the No. 1 money-laundering area in Canada, by far, is Alberta; No. 2 is Ontario; and 3 and 4 are Saskatchewan and Manitoba. British Columbia comes in No. 5. After that, Quebec and the Maritimes. So in fact, according to the government study, British Columbia is on the low side of money laundering. It’s interesting that so much talk comes in the media and government about money laundering and the cause of house prices — the rise. But we don’t really hear people in Saskatchewan or Manitoba railing against money laundering and how it’s affecting their house prices. So something else is clearly going on.

The government report also came up with the interesting statistic that 90 percent of all money laundering in Canada comes from Europe and the United States, and 7.5 percent comes from East Asia, of which China is part of that. You might think that East Asia includes Japan, Korea, Taiwan and others — Vietnam, etc.

[5:35 p.m.]

China is probably about 5 percent of money laundering, according to the government report. So the caricature of what’s behind our house prices seems to be a little bit different than reality.

I know that in the media there was a lot of discussion about 25,000 single detached houses in Vancouver that were basically empty while someone from another country was living somewhere else. Now fortunately, we have this vacant house tax in Vancouver where they’ve actually got to audit and do a lot of study, and believe me, they are really interested in getting revenue for that program.

They found 780 homes in Vancouver that are empty, so those are subject to the tax — 780 versus 25,000. In fact, only about 200 to 300 of those homes are single detached homes. You’ll see in Dunbar, where thousands of homes were supposed to be empty with foreign owners, the number is actually 14.

So it’s a little bit of a disconnect between what we hear in the media, and even from government, and what is true. The majority of empty homes are actually owned by people who live in other countries, but mostly they invest here. They have a reason. They have business here or families here.

I have many people that live around me. Some of them have actually gone home. It was really troubling for me to hear mostly people from the United States say to me that they came to Vancouver…. They love Vancouver. They love British Columbia because it doesn’t have this anti-foreign sentiment. They say they love leaving the U.S. and leaving all the foreigner-bashing behind. And they were so distraught to be called foreign buyers. Speculators, they were called.

One of these people, actually, is on a board of a strata corporation and is a very well-known volunteer in Vancouver. Her husband is living in the U.S. and working there. She’s, basically, living here as much as she can be. She is really quite distraught that she is called, by her province that she loves, a speculator. We’ve got many, many stories like that.

I just want to note that I’ve been doing some studying of Vancouver history. Vancouver has always had 5 to 10 percent of our housing owned by foreigners, mostly Americans. Rudyard Kipling bought two houses on Fraser Street in the 1890s, and he said: “Everybody is doing it. Everybody is buying houses in Vancouver.”

Actually, Main Street used to be called Westminster, and Broadway used to be called 9th. Because the city was so interested in getting U.S. foreign buyers to buy up real estate, they changed the name to Main and Broadway because those were names that would resonate and probably sell, sight unseen, to American buyers.

But what we’ve seen is that we have now a situation where foreigners or people who don’t normally live here are called speculators. I might note that 50,000 British Columbians live half the year, or a good part of the year, in Mexico, Costa Rica, Thailand, the United States. There are whole communities, whole neighbourhoods, in Palm Desert and other cities full of British Columbians who live there. They aren’t charged a speculation tax. They are not vilified as foreigners.

[5:40 p.m.]

I was with a group of people that were trading stories about how they had…. Some had purchased. Some lived in rural areas, and they look at Vancouver as their summer getaway. So they’d buy a condo or they’d buy a place in Vancouver. Now they are called speculators. A couple of them had actually bought just over the border in Blaine and one in Whidbey Island. They were fine.

The lesson that this group got from that whole experience was that if you have a lot of money and you want to put it into a second home, a getaway, go across the border. Make sure you put your money in the U.S., not in British Columbia, if you want to avoid being vilified as a speculator and a keeper of an empty home.

Some other issues that have come to my mind…. Well, I’ll just give you a little bit of background, because I live in a very historic part of the city. What I learned was that in 1885, the street system of Vancouver was registered — New Westminster, 1885. I thought: “Wow. The city didn’t even start until 1886.” It turns out that the street system was planned out and named by private corporations. The Canadian Pacific Railway led the effort and did a consultation with all the landowners, and they came up with this street system. Lauchlan Hamilton, who was the surveyor, wandered through the forest and started hammering in stakes — Homer Street, Hamilton Street, Granville Street. This was in the middle of the forest.

Then I learned that right through, for the first 40 years of Vancouver’s existence, there were no government planners. Everything was created by the private sector. Even the major streets were created by the B.C. Electric Co. Right up until 1961, all of our transit was private. It was owned by a private company called B.C. Electric. Every time the government wanted to take over the transit system, the voters opposed it. The voters believed that if we ever got a government-owned transit system, the taxpayers would have to subsidize it.

Now, up to 1961, there was no subsidized transit. Everything was at the risk of the private company. So right up until 1961, there were zero subsidies for transit. Then the government took over, and the rest is history.

But right up until 1928, it was the B.C. Electric Co. that would determine which streets would be major, so it was based on the needs of the company. They chose Robson, Davie and Denman to be the major streets. They chose 4th Avenue to be a major street because it had enough catchment on both areas. It was quite remarkable to realize that almost all of the city of Vancouver had no government involvement in the planning at all.

Then in 1928, we got a guy named Bartholomew who came through and totally changed everything. Everything became government. That was a time when government planning was very in vogue. In fact, 1928 was the same year that Stalin brought in planning to the Soviet Union. And it was the same year that Vancouver brought in planning and zoning into Vancouver. It was part of the zeitgeist of that time.

What happened was, up until that time, the boundaries of the city and the use of the city was very fluid. For example, the wealthiest people in the city originally lived on Alexander Street, named after Richard Alexander, the manager of the mill — Hastings Mill. When things got tight because a lot of people were moving in and it became less calm, all of the wealthy people moved to the West End. There were literally dozens and dozens, maybe 100 or so mansions in the West End. There’s only one left now — I think it’s called Gabriola — on Davie Street.

[5:45 p.m.]

Then things got tense there too — more workers moving in, more apartments, more industry — and they all moved then to Shaughnessy. But because they didn’t want to move again, they came to the provincial government and got the very first zoning in Canada — 1914, the Shaughnessy Settlement Act. It reserved all of Shaughnessy for large single detached homes only. The very first time in British Columbia history that we had zoning, and it was made, basically, to protect wealthy people from having apartment buildings or other commercial areas. So when you go up 16th Avenue, on Granville, you’ll find that as soon as you hit 16th, there is no commercial after that boundary.

That went on till 1952, when we got a Jamaican-born-and-raised British planner who came in. He loosened up the system, so we got the West End. We got the Vancouver Special, etc., and Vancouver had the second-highest density of neon signs. Then in 1973, everything went way into an extreme form of planning, which we are living in right now. Everything is completely, minutely planned by bureaucrats, and it is very difficult to make housing. In fact, since 1973, the majority of Vancouver neighbourhoods have less people living in them today than they did in the ’70s. That whole planning regime has exacerbated our housing price problem.

Now we’re going back. I know the city of Vancouver is doing another plan, a comprehensive plan, which is probably the root of the problem, and that is their plan to help deal with the issue.

Fortunately, we’ve had a government agency, CMHC, decide to, once and for all, figure out what was behind rising house prices. They had 30 economists. They got a budget of $1.5 million, and they worked for a year to find out. They used all of the massive data sets of Stats Canada, and they found that 75 percent of the price rise could be predicted by three factors: (1) rising income, (2) increasing population and (3) low mortgage rates. This is actually completely normal forces.

They looked for the other 25 percent that had exacerbated it all, and they found that it was government policy that was actually behind the climb in house prices. It’s very unfortunate that we would vilify and talk about an ethnic group and blame foreigners on something that the government study, economists, all say are caused by local forces.

Oh, I see my time is up, Mr. Speaker. You’re giving me the sign. Thank you very much for allowing me to speak.

R. Singh: It gives me immense pleasure to stand up and speak in favour of our throne speech. I’m so proud to be part of this government that has been working for the last 2½ years to make life affordable, to provide great services for people and also to create a very sustainable economy.

I remember when I was running for election in 2017, my first time, and then that was the first time I got to know the people in my community, really talk to them and find out what the real issues for them were. One issue that kept on coming up, almost at every doorstep that I went to, was affordability. I heard that people were being left behind, and these were all working people, but they were living paycheque to paycheque. It seemed that the policies or the conditions that the previous government had made were not viable for the working families. They were working very hard, and some of them were working two or three jobs but not getting the results back, not being able to afford the things that mattered to them the most.

That is something that I and, I know, all of my colleagues advocated for, and that is something we were very committed to as a government. We saw the results of that coming in the last 2½ years.

[5:50 p.m.]

I can say about my community of Surrey that a few things really have made a positive impact on affordability. One of the first things that we did was eliminate the tolls on the Port Mann Bridge. That was something that I was hearing a lot about. People felt that they were being unfairly taxed by having those tolls. Taking that away was one of the first few decisions and first few announcements that we did when we formed government, and we are continuing that work.

I’ll just mention the key components of affordability that we have been able to accomplish. That’s reflected in this throne speech as well. As I said, we have eliminated the tolls. We have eliminated the MSP fees. That will put $900 for a single person and $1,800 for couples — money that they can use for things that matter to them, like going to the recreation centre or going for a dinner out with the family. I have heard about this so much. When I go out in the community, people come up to me and tell me how much difference the elimination of the MSP is making for them.

ICBC was one sector. Whenever we used to talk about ICBC, and when people in my community talked about ICBC, it was with a lot of concern. People were really concerned with their insurance prices going up. That was another factor of affordability that they were concerned about. We have made the announcement on the measures that we have done to make ICBC insurance less expensive and to bring more fairness for drivers. That is something that our government is doing.

Another thing we are working towards is increasing the minimum wage. When we came to power, B.C., which is considered to be one of the most expensive to live in, had one of the lowest minimum wages in all of Canada. That’s what the Minister of Labour has worked on with a lot of dedication. Right now in B.C., the minimum wage is at $14.60, which will move up to $15.20 by the next year. That goes a long way to bringing people out of poverty. That is bringing people up, lifting people up.

I would really like to commend the government and talk a little bit about our efforts that the government is continuing — the work to increase the housing supply. That is also something that I kept on hearing about — the housing issues. I’m so glad that through our partnerships with non-profits, municipal governments, First Nations and businesses, we are building 114,000 new homes over ten years.

Our government’s speculation and vacancy tax is turning empty homes into housing. We know that for a long time, people were using housing as speculation. It was something that they could make money out of. I saw that happening so much in the community that I was living in. I heard from so many people, especially the new immigrants.

Surrey, as you know, is a community that gets more than 1,000 new people every month who make Surrey their home. These are the people who were being left behind. These are the people who came with a dream of owning a home, but that dream, it seemed to them, was going farther and farther. They were working hard, both the partners working, and, as I mentioned before, working two or three families….

With the cost of housing going up unchecked — especially with speculation attached to it and nothing being done by the previous government to curtail it — we are taking measures to make housing more affordable. Bringing in the speculation and vacancy tax is one way to do that. We are also acting on the recommendations of the Rental Housing Task Force to provide more security measures for the renters.

[5:55 p.m.]

When I talk about housing, it is very important to mention the investments that we have made into social housing. I see that in Surrey, especially on 105A street, which was considered to be the tent city in Surrey. We made efforts — I would really like to thank our Minister of Housing for that — in a partnership with the city of Surrey, to make more modular homes in that area so that the homeless people who were sleeping on the roadside had more stable, sustainable housing where they could get the services that they deserved. That is something that our government has done.

Creating housing for victims of domestic violence. In my previous job, I used to work as a violence-against-women counsellor and used to work on the crisis lines. A lot of times I would get a call in the middle of the night, hearing from a woman who was trying to escape a violent situation but not knowing where to go because there were not enough shelters. There were not enough transition houses that were available. I’m glad of the commitment of the Minister of Housing to put more resources into transitional housing.

Also, I’m very proud of all the work my colleague the Minister of State for Child Care has put in, on this file. I have the honour of sitting with her on the child care working group. Every day, every time, I see the passion and the dedication that she has for this file. We know that for very long, parents did not have access to affordable child care.

I can give my own example. When I first moved to this country, I had a two-year-old child. I just simply did not have the resources to afford child care for my child. That was an option not available to me, and I know that was not an option available to many new parents. For my family, we had to choose between either me working or doing some split shifts. I used to work during the day, and my husband used to work during the night. That’s an arrangement that I know many families were doing.

It gives me such a proud moment when I see the investment, the dedication, that goes into creating the child care spaces. In recent years, in the 2½ years since we formed the government, we know that child care costs have been reduced by hundreds of dollars a month. As I said, now with that happening, more and more parents can participate in the workforce.

I think this is helping our economy because it is a choice that a lot of mothers, especially, will make — not participating in the workforce because they don’t have safe, reliable and affordable child care for their child. They would stay at home and take care of their children, rather than going out and working. I think that goes a long way in women’s empowerment — making the space, making the conditions so that they are able to go out and get into the workforce if they want to do so.

I’m so glad that already, as I mentioned, we have done the work to create affordable child care, but this work is just not going to stop. Our throne speech is very clear: this work will continue. We will be funding over 10,000 new child care spaces, and many more to come. We will keep on working on the fee reductions and the affordable child care benefit. That is something that is coming. That will start later this year, from fall 2020.

That’s a new benefit coming for parents, a benefit that parents can avail of till their child is up to the age of 18. That is something very new that we are bringing in. I think that will go a long way, not just in providing the child care services but in helping a lot in our affordability promise and commitment as well.

[6:00 p.m.]

As I mentioned, another thing that we are committed to is improving services. After affordability, that is something I heard from my constituents all the time. One thing that came up…. Two major services that used to come up were health care in Surrey and also education.

Being a mother of two children — one has passed out of the public school system, and one is still in the public school system — I know how concerned I used to be as to what kind of education my child was getting. I’m so proud of the commitment of our government and also of the Minister of Education for putting in the resources. We have put historic resources into education in Surrey.

Surrey, as we know, was being left behind for far too long. In recent years, we have seen a number of capital projects — new schools being opened — and this work will continue. We know that it is not a short-term plan. It is something of a commitment to provide the education that our students deserve and that they should be getting.

That’s why we are committed to provide the funding, obviously, to build many more new schools but also to do the seismic upgrades for the safe conditions of the schools so that whenever any parent drops a child at school, they feel confident that their child is getting a very good education in a very safe environment.

Along with that, we have invested in hiring more teachers. That is something that we were hearing from the school district and from the parents — that there were not enough teachers. We have hired more than 3,500 teachers. We are committed to doing that. I think that for the first time, children and youth in care will be recognized with a new funding supplement, and funding will be expanded to children with mental health challenges and children from low-income families.

As I mentioned, one of the key services that I kept on hearing about was our health care in Surrey. Surrey is the fastest-growing community, and people felt that they were not getting the health services that they deserved, with the longer wait times and having to sit in the ER for more than eight hours.

We are committed to providing health care services. Since July 2017, our government has moved forward on new hospitals, urgent and primary care centres and hip-and-knee clinics in communities around the province. I’m so proud to say that Surrey was one of the first places to get an urgent primary care centre. I’m so proud of the work of the Minister of Health.

Also, I’m sure, we are advocating for more such services coming in Surrey. I hope, with this throne speech and the commitments we have in there, that we would see — in addition to the one primary care centre that we have there — more coming in the community. We were hearing so many times that people who needed non-emergency services, because they didn’t have access to doctors after hours, were going to the ER. That’s what was creating those long wait times in the ER for the people who had real emergency situations.

Creating these kinds of facilities and opening up such facilities, we are making way and making more options for people to access the health services that they need after hours. I have heard so many good things about the urgent primary care centre.

Also, we have continued to increase the staffing hours in the residential health care homes so that seniors can get the care they need and deserve. We are recruiting more doctors and nurse’s aides and opening up more training seats for health care assistants and specialist positions so people can get better, faster health care, closer to home.

[6:05 p.m.]

When I talk about health care, I cannot leave mental health behind. We all know about the overdose crisis. Our government’s efforts are making a difference in that. Since the crisis began, it’s really sad, but it’s really good to know that at least 4,700 deaths have been avoided thanks to the extended harm reduction and treatment options. We are connecting people to life-saving supports, including treatment and recovery, and also allocating more resources to law enforcement to address the criminal elements of this crisis.

Another thing. I would now come to infrastructure. That’s something — the transit and the infrastructure that our community depends on. We are continuing our efforts. You will notice that there are quite a few infrastructure projects underway, like the Pattullo Bridge replacement, the Highway 1 expansion and the final phase of the Kicking Horse Canyon project.

What I would like to say in the end is that our government is making different choices, and they’re choices that are putting people first. We know that we have come a long way in 2½ years, but our job is not finished yet. We still have to do much more, but I’m so proud of the work that we have been able to accomplish in the last 2½ years. We will continue to work to make life more affordable, deliver better services that people count on and build a strong, sustainable economy for everyone.

I really look forward to the work and continuing to serve the people of this province.

D. Barnett: By parliamentary tradition, the Speech from the Throne is an opportunity for the government of the day to present the people with a new vision and a fresh approach to the challenges we face as a province. The throne speech should also encapsulate what the government plans to do over the long term and the short term. The throne speech should also indicate what British Columbians can expect from the provincial budget next year.

Unfortunately, there is no good news for those in the forest industry who lost jobs because of mill closures. There is no good news for those who have had their vehicles repossessed. There is no good news if the bank foreclosed on your house during the nearly eight-month strike at Western Forest Products.

For all of the people of British Columbia who were counting on the government to actually follow through on their promises, the Speech from the Throne came as a rather big disappointment. The big thing the Speech from the Throne lacked was hope.

Think of it. Think of the people in rural British Columbia who have been suffering through the longest strike in the history of and other issues in the forest industry. They have been counting on the government to act on their behalf. Yet this Minister of Forests and this Premier did nothing and sat on their hands on the sidelines for months.

It was overwhelming public pressure that finally forced the hand of the Labour Minister to intervene for the 3,000 forest workers that had been out of work for eight months, and all the communities who faced the economic impact. I’m thankful that the minister intervened, but it was a little late.

What about the people in my riding of Cariboo-Chilcotin? Within the last three years, we have suffered through the two worst wildfire seasons in recorded history. In the spring, ranchers have suffered through severe flooding, yet none of these things were even mentioned in the throne speech.

[6:10 p.m.]

Ranchers, forest workers, outfitters who work in the back country — all were looking for some signal in the throne speech that this government cares about rural British Columbia, but we didn’t hear a thing.

The speech should have indicated the government was planning a strategic economic plan to rescue the forest industry. The fact is, there is no economic plan. The government doesn’t have one.

What are the plans to open global markets? The only announcement we heard was the closure of 13 trade offices across Asia. From Hong Kong to Seoul to Tokyo to Singapore and to New Delhi, the government is cutting off our economic advantage for one simple reason: this tax-and-spend government has run out of money.

The fact is that Japan, Korea and China account for almost 30 percent of B.C.’s forest product exports. Many years ago, when we faced the ongoing softwood lumber dispute with the U.S., the previous government recognized that British Columbia’s economy could not remain exclusively dependent on exports to the United States. The only way out was to deliver and to diversify our economy.

We had to find new customers for our forest products elsewhere, especially in emerging markets located throughout Asia. By establishing a trade presence in countries like China, for example, we were able to increase the value and volume of forest product exports sold to that country by 20-fold since 2003.

At that time, when our forest industry needs new markets, this government seeks to shut down our foreign trade presence. What’s worse? When the Premier had the opportunity to join his fellow Premiers on a trade mission to the United States, British Columbia was absent.

In the last few weeks, the federal government led a delegation to Washington along with the Premiers of Ontario, Alberta, Quebec, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick. All of these provinces produce substantial lumber products. But without B.C. on board, the federal minister responsible for Canada-U.S. trade regulations, Chrystia Freeland, did not have the backing of the whole team.

The fact is British Columbia is one of the world’s largest exporters of softwood lumber. British Columbia should have been there to press our case. The Premier campaigned on a promise to fly to Washington and resolve the softwood lumber dispute in the last provincial election. He did end up flying to the U.S. capital, but that was only to pick up a fundraising cheque from union bosses. That was 2017, and he hasn’t returned since.

For forest workers in my riding of Cariboo-Chilcotin, who have lost their job either through reduced shifts or permanent mill closures, there is not a great deal of reassurance coming from this government.

The agriculture sector in my riding isn’t faring that well either. Last fall, when news broke that the Agriculture Minister was planning to use satellites to spy on farmers and ranchers, it sounded like more science fiction than a sincere policy announcement. The thought of Big Brother looking over the shoulder of every member of the agriculture community drew outrage from across the province and against this government and Agriculture Minister, in particular.

Make no mistake. The government is still planning to use the sophisticated RADARSAT-2 satellite to monitor the activities of unsuspecting farmers and ranchers day and night, seven days a week, in order to enforce heavy-handed legislation.

We are talking about a struggling agriculture industry. There are many in agriculture who hold down full-time jobs off site just to make ends meet. Blocking any extra earning potential, such as the ability to set up a farm product retail outlet — like a corn stand, for example — is a slap in the face to farmers.

[6:15 p.m.]

It seems this government is more concerned with protecting the land than supporting the people who grow our food. So when word got out that the agriculture community would be subject to satellite surveillance, the Agriculture Minister received a wave of online outrage against this government’s police state mentality. Although the minister has promised to back down temporarily, we know this fight is not over yet.

In January, the Premier certainly got an earful attending the 17th annual B.C. Natural Resources Forum in Prince George. It is one of the largest conferences held in northern B.C. and attracts over 1,000 participants, including all three levels of government, First Nations and, of course, loads of representatives from resource developers, suppliers and service industries. This annual conference spanned everything from forestry to mining and energy resources. Participants include pretty much every major employer in the north. The conference focused on the current crisis in the forest industry, a sharp 9 percent decline in B.C.’s mine exports, and all the controversy surrounding both the Trans Mountain pipeline and the Coastal GasLink LNG pipeline.

The fact is that the government suffered a major court defeat when the Supreme Court abruptly dismissed its attempt to use every tool in the toolbox to stop expansion of Trans Mountain. The court loss was predictable. It fulfilled what former Alberta Premier Rachel Notley predicted — that the Premier’s toolbox turned out to be Fisher-Price, not DeWALT. This is good news for people who use real toolboxes all across the country. In the end, participants at the natural resource forum sent a strong message for the Premier: “Stop throwing all sorts of tax increases and regulations in the way of our economy. It’s killing jobs and the future of people who choose to make northern B.C. a place to live, work, play and raise a family.”

In the budget, local government was looking for an indication that the rural dividend would be restored. You recall when the Forests Minister made his $69 million announcement to aid forestry workers last September? Everyone assumed this was new money being introduced into the system. Little did we know this was not true.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

The government quietly dug into its current budget and repurposed funds from existing programs. Part of that plan included the cancellation of this year’s rural dividend fund. This cut off much-needed money to 300 local governments and First Nations communities across rural B.C.

D. Barnett moved adjournment of debate.

Speaker’s Statement

THIRD READING OF BILL 7

Mr. Speaker: Members, earlier in this sitting, in putting the question for third reading of Bill 7, Arbitration Act, I misspoke, stating Bill 10, when it was evident to all members that it was Bill 7 that had been reported complete with amendments, and leave to proceed to third reading was granted. For greater clarity, I will restate the question.

Shall Bill 7, Arbitration Act, be read a third time?

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: Sorry for that error.

Committee of Supply (Section A), having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

Hon. M. Farnworth moved adjournment of the House.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 1:30 tomorrow afternoon.

The House adjourned at 6:20 p.m.